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By Katrina
Mennen A. Valdez Researcher and Nini Yarte
World Trade
Organization aims to set up negotiations within the first half of
the year and mark its conclusion before the second quarter of 2008
ends, the WTO director general said on Friday.
At a press
conference hosted by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, WTO’s Pascal Lamy expressed hope for a
“breakthrough” in stalled Doha Round negotiations before the end
of the second quarter and a conclusion eight months thereafter.
But if the
breakthrough does not take place, “we are back to where we were
when the negotiations broke down,” last year, he said. This could
lead to “an erosion of the multilateral trading system,” he
warned.
He said the
breakthrough must come before the expiration of the US President’s
Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) on July 1, Lamy said. The TPA gives
US President George W. Bush the power to submit trade deals for
accelerated approval by lawmakers in a straight “yes” or
“no” vote, without amendments.
Lamy defined a
WTO breakthrough as reaching a “basic agreement on agricultural
subsidies ... agricultural tariffs and industrial tariff
reductions.”
The WTO
director general acknowledged that bilateral talks between the major
trade powers to revive the Doha Round are moving too slowly, but
said “work is ongoing on trade in services to prepare the improved
offers that every country should file.”
The basic
template to such an agreement is ready and negotiators only have to
agree on “the precise numbers” in the accord, Lamy said.
He said the
“major players,” namely the United States, the European Union,
India, Brazil and Japan, were “consulting quietly with each
other,” to ensure such a breakthrough could be achieved.
The Doha
talks, launched in 2001 in the Qatari capital, aims to remove
barriers to global trade but are currently deadlocked, notably over
steps to reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies.
The WTO talks
were suspended last July, but trade ministers at the World Economic
Forum in Davos last month agreed that negotiations should resume.
Talks collapsed in July 2005 after major powers deadlocked over
politically sensitive issues, especially calls to remove
agricultural protection.
“We could
… resume talks… and come up with a breakthrough; otherwise,
economies of all [member] countries would also be put on hold,”
Lamy said.
In a speech to
Philippine businessmen Lamy stressed the country had much to gain in
the success of the WTO talks, both in obtaining better access to
foreign markets and in shoring up its own industries to foreign
competition.
The WTO chief
said that many proposals have already been presented, but what is on
the table today is impressive: “Though it is not enough to lead us
to success, we already have in our hands the possibility to
strengthen the multilateral trading system and make it fairer for
the developing countries.”
The Doha Round
is designed to boost the global economy and alleviate millions out
of poverty through more trade and investment. However, several
peasant groups in the Philippines have accused him of pressuring the
Philippine government to change its stand on delayed global trade
talks.
Their joint
statement issued accused the WTO chief of “conducting bilateral
talks and compelling developing countries like the Philippines to
soften its position on the safeguards for livelihood and food
security and rural development.”
In response,
Lamy said in an exclusive interview with The Manila Times that all
the flexibilities, referring to country-to-country position on
Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanisms, on which
“decisions have been taken will remain.”
He said
negotiations on those flexibilities are “already on the table, and
negotiations go forward, not backward.”
Lamy
emphasized that discussions on these principles are now focused on
how far a country can go in shielding its tariff line and on market
access. He said negotiations always entail a compromise “but not
to the detriment of these flexibilities.”
He added that
those compromises are not about “removing those flexibilities but
adding more.”
In a related
matter, Lamy said the Doha Development Round is difficult to
finalize because of its ambitious objective, which is much larger
and critical than in any previous round.
“In previous
rounds, there were no formula agreed for tariff reductions, people
worked with averages so there were possibilities of hiding tariff
peaks. Now with one formula, though it is fairer, it is also much
difficult because it hurts in addressing tariff peaks in both
developed and developing countries,” he said.
Furthermore,
with 150 member nations and diversity of issues, coupled with
WTO’s traditional bottom-up approach and single undertaking nature
of the negotiating agenda, Lamy said, “Nothing is agreed until
everything is agreed, which makes it harder to reach consensus.”
Commenting on
about half a dozen leftist protesters chanting “Pascal Lamy, get
out,” who were allowed into the forum before being escorted from
the room,
Lamy said this
is a regular event of his life: “I’m accustomed to that; I
don’t mind. But I would like to clarify that I’m not a
negotiator. I am not here to negotiate or lobby. I am here to
discuss.”
 --with
AFP
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