WTO: Envoys discuss key document for talks By Frances Williams in Geneva
World Trade Organisation envoys yesterday began discussing a revised draft of the final declaration ministers will make when they meet in Seattle in about five weeks to launch new trade liberalisation talks.
Both the European Union and Japan rejected an earlier version last week but the latest 32-page draft, essentially a compilation of different proposals for the negotiating agenda, goes a long way towards meeting their objections.
The text contains a reference to the "multifunctional" nature of agriculture at the instigation of Japan and the EU, to food safety and animal welfare which the EU has pressed for and to the possibility of amending anti-dumping rules, Japan's particular concern.
However, virtually everything in the document is in square brackets signalling disagreements. Few trade diplomats expect work in Geneva to finish by the self-imposed November 5 deadline after which the text is supposed to be sent to capitals for review.
On the key issue of agriculture, and on the scope of the negotiations beyond already-mandated talks on farm trade and services, hugely divergent views will be hard to bridge.
The EU and Japan, which advocate a comprehensive round to include investment and competition policy, have been accused by the US and other agricultural exporters of trying to divert attention away from the need to lower barriers to farm trade which they regard as the core of the negotiations.
In addition, one of the potentially most controversial issues in the ministerial declaration - what it should say on labour standards - does not even feature in the latest draft despite the announced intention of the US to seek a WTO working party on trade and labour.
The EU is also considering whether to back WTO involvement in labour issues, anathema to developing countries which bitterly oppose any trade-labour link. The Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions yesterday repeated its call for a working party to examine how to incorporate core labour standards in WTO agreements.