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Key WTO nations set detailed timeline on global trade talks

AFP
January 28, 2006

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WTO chief Pascal Lamy and ministers from 19 nations have agreed on a detailed timeline to smooth progress over global trade talks, which one participant said was entering its "end game".

After the first political gathering since the World Trade Organisation's full ministerial conference in Hong Kong last month, Lamy said about 40 percent of a landmark deal on breaking down barriers to commerce still needed to be secured by the agreed deadline of the end of the year.

"There was a shared but sober realisation of what needs to be done," Lamy told journalists.

"Nobody has questioned this deadline," he added Saturday. "They all know they have to move."

Some of the most contentious issues, opening up markets for farm trade, as well as industrial goods and services, are still on the table.

"We are entering the end game period, but we will be successful," Swiss Economy Minister Joseph Deiss, who chaired the informal meeting, said in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.

The ministers set out a timetable of intermediate steps that need to be completed on the way to two key meetings in April and July that were agreed on in Hong Kong, he added.

Full details were not made available because the rest of the WTO's 149 members still have to examine them.

Lamy said the trade talks had covered "60 percent of the road on average", although he acknowledged that the negotiators have "a big nut to crack on agriculture and on non-agricultural market access".

"The question is, how do we move 40 percent of the way in one year?" he added.

The primary battleline pits wealthy nations such as the United States and members of the European Union against the G20 group of poor countries led by emerging nations Brazil and India.

Those four key actors were among the 19 present on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, representing a cross-section of trade interests.

Developing countries want the United States and European Union to dismantle agricultural import barriers, while industralised nations are demanding that the G20 and others open up industrial markets and services.

An EU offer for tariff cuts on farm trade is regarded as insufficient, a similar one from the United States has been questioned, and each side is pressing the other to make the next move.

The timeline was designed to set intermediate targets showing what negotiators should achieve in the detailed technical talks over the coming weeks and months, and when.

That would allow the WTO to assess the state of progress on the way to the deadlines in Hong Kong and apply pressure where needed, the trade officials said. Many trading nations are insisting on parallel progress on all issues.

"That's absolutely key, to move in concert," Lamy said.

Ministers will be called in along the way when necessary, because some of the issues -- notably agricultural subsidies and import tariffs -- and the trade-offs will demand political choices from the countries involved.

The Hong Kong conference concluded December 18 with an agreement on an end-date of 2013 to remove farm export subsidies, a swift end to cotton subsidies and the opening of rich country markets to more goods from the world's poorest nations.

But the 149 trading nations still failed to achieve the full framework for the Doha Round launched in 2001, leaving out the most contentious issues.

Those are due to be sealed up in the meetings scheduled in April and July.

"Of course there's going to be a deal, everybody wants it, everybody's holding some card or something in their pocket," Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said.

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