WTO report claims growing support for new round

By C. Rammanohar Reddy

GENEVA, JULY 26. Substantial differences remain between countries at the World Trade Organisation on the issues to negotiate for further trade liberalisation, although officials representing the interests of the developed economies are confident that even if time is short the gaps will be narrowed and, unlike the failure at Seattle in 1999, a new round of negotiations will be launched at the fourth WTO ministerial conference at Doha in November.

A WTO report card that has been put together for a high-level meeting next week here on the state of play after months of intensive preparatory talks speaks of ``wide and growing - though not universal - support'' for a new round with a large negotiating agenda, but at the same time refers to the ``entrenched nature'' of some differences between countries.

The chasms between countries cut across economic groups. The European Union remains insistent on a huge agenda that would cover negotiations on new rules for foreign investment, national competition policies and environment that would compensate for any concessions it may have to make later on agriculture, while the U.S. is more enthusiastic about a focussed agenda that will deliver results in a short time. And even after three years of discussions, there has been a less than meaningful response from the advanced economies on the developing country demand to first correct the imbalances in the 1994 Uruguay Round agreements before expanding the negotiating agenda.

While earlier expectations were for a settlement of most outstanding issues by the end of July, this is not going to happen even after next week's high-level conference as it is now clear that political will is needed to break the current logjam.

The review of the preparations, put together by the Chairman of the General Council and the Director-General of the WTO, states that an agreement on the negotiating agenda is not impossible provided two ``essential'' conditions are met: ``A strengthening of the political will to find consensus solutions and the conversion of that political will into negotiated outcomes.''

A failure to meet these conditions will mean that the commerce and trade ministers will be pressured to reach a compromise over less than a week of meetings in Doha. Since that is likely to result in a collapse, as it did in Seattle, the process this time round in Geneva is being managed more intelligently. No ``bracketed'' text (that is, a document showing differences between countries) which would show the gaps in positions has been put out and Mr. Mike Moore, the Director-General of the WTO, loses no opportunity to announce that a Doha failure could result in bilateralism and regionalism becoming ascendant over the multilateralist WTO.

What is unusual about the latest report is that it makes no mention at all of labour - the so-called social clause that would impose labour standards on developing countries. Senior trade officials say this is one area where a consensus is impossible at Doha, though others do not rule out the possibility of the issue being brought up at the last minute.

However, on most issues, the positions of the member-countries have not changed since the Seattle ministerial conference and this is reflected in the latest report card, which is in many ways the result of more than 18 months of discussions at Geneva. But what has changed since 1999 is that the Republican administration in the U.S. is as enthusiastic as the previous Democratic one was ambivalent about new negotiations, and, the E.U. and the U.S. do, on the surface at least, now show a better working relationship at the WTO. However, neither may be enough to produce a consensus on the agenda for a new round of talks, unless the interests of all the other major countries and groupings - especially, Japan, the Cairns group of agricultural exporters and the developing countries - are also accommodated in a consensus decision.

The developing countries remain disappointed as their longstanding ``implementation concerns,'' on the table since 1998, are yet to be settled in a satisfactory manner. A meeting last week of the WTO General Council saw officials from a number of developing countries, including India, express their disappointment and frustration about the consensus package being offered to deal with the problems they have been experiencing in implementation of the Uruguay Round.

That package, prepared as well by the Chairman of the General Council and the WTO Director-General, did not deal with textiles and anti-dumping duties, which are two of the most important implementation concerns of the developing countries. And according to some trade officials, the package took things backward in some other areas like Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

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