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GENEVA: World powers reeled with regret and emotion on Wednesday
from the collapse of World Trade Organization negotiations for a
global trade pact, warning that the poorest countries would suffer.
“It is particularly distressing for us that we
find ourselves without an agreement today,” US Trade
Representative Susan Schwab told a news conference, as delegates
reviewed the wreckage of nine days of talks.
She lamented that tense talks had broken down on
deadlock over special import tariff measures, after certain
countries rejected WTO proposals.
“It would have worked, and yet there were
others who demanded more. And more included a tool to close
markets,” Schwab said, without naming names.
Delegates who went into many late nights in an
attempt to reach a deal affecting the lives of popu-lations around
the globe, said that deadlock had centered on a row between the
United States and India over tariffs.
Kenya’s trade minister meanwhile warned that
the breakdown of talks “gravely undermined” efforts by African
countries to fight poverty.
Ministers had struggled for nine days to reach
consensus on subsidy levels and import tariffs for a new deal under
the WTO’s Doha Round, which has foundered repeatedly since it was
launched seven years ago.
Delegates said negotiations stumbled on
proposals for so-called SSM measures to protect poor farmers that
would have imposed a special tariff on certain agricultural goods in
the event of an import surge or price fall.
“Africa’s opportunity to achieve fair trade
has . . . been gravely undermined by the lack of progress in these
negotiations,” the minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, told a news
conference, speaking on behalf of a grouping of African countries at
the WTO talks here.
“Africa critically needs to realize
development and get itself out of poverty through the establishment
of fair trade rather than aid,” he said.
Several delegates hoped on Tuesday for further
moves to salvage the negotiating process in light of progress that
had raised spirits over the weekend. But momentum seemed to have
ground to a halt.
“It’s extremely difficult to find words to
express the disappointment,” said European Union Commissioner
Mariann Fischer-Boel in an emotional address on Tuesday. “It’s a
truly sad day for the developing countries that had so much to
gain.”
“We will need to let the dust settle a bit,”
the World Trade Organization’s Director-General Pascal Lamy said.
“WTO members will need to have a sober look at if and how they
bring the pieces back together.”
The world’s economic superpower, the United
States, and India, one of the world’s biggest emerging economies,
were sharply divided over the SSM—the special safeguard mechanism.
“I feel very disappointed that this had to be
left unresolved in the last miles,” India’s Commerce Minister
Kamal Nath told reporters. “It’s unfortunate that in a
developing round, the last miles we couldn’t run [due to the SSM].”
India and other developing countries wanted the
mechanism to kick in at a lower import surge level than has been
proposed in order to protect their millions of poor farmers from
starvation. Nath said that about 100 developing nations backed his
position.
Others wanted it to take effect at a higher rate
so as not to hurt exporters.
Ministers avoided publicly pointing the finger
of blame. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Tuesday that
the collapse was a “collective failure.”
Schwab said it was an “irony” that “all of
these debates about how easy or how hard it should be to raise
barriers to food imports took place in the context of a global food
crisis.”
“The last thing we should be thinking about is
raising barriers to trade in food.”
-- AFP
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