GLOOM DESCENDS ON PROSPECTS FOR NEW WORLD TRADE ROUND.
Senior officials from up to 20 countries will meet in Geneva today in an atmosphere of some gloom, to discuss prospects for the launch of new global trade liberalization talks this year, reports the Financial Times (p.4). WTO Director-General Mike Moore this month stressed the need for "95 percent" of the agenda to be agreed by the end of July if WTO members were to launch global negotiations at their next ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar in November. But with only four months to go before the July target, little apparent progress has been made.
Developing-country opponents of a new trade round have, if anything, hardened their positions. Industrialized countries remain split on the agenda, while US trade officials have decided to give priority to next month's summit in Canada, which aims to accelerate negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.
US officials are not even attending today's meeting convened by the EU and Japan, the round's staunchest proponents. US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick says the US will work for a new trade round, but it is not clear how much effort Washington is prepared to put into preparations, what its negotiating priorities are, and where the necessary compromises will be made.
By far the most important task ahead is to convince skeptical developing countries, which now comprise three-quarters of the WTO's 140-strong membership, that a round would be in their interests. As their price for agreeing to a new trade round, developing countries have posted a long list of demands ranging from extra market access for their textiles and farm exports to firm pledges by the industrialized nations to address their concerns in the negotiations.
The European Commission has already indicated it is prepared to be more flexible, says the story, but there is no sign that the US is prepared to take an equally flexible approach. Some fear that the political will to make compromises is just not there, the story notes. "Few people really think a good round is a good thing in itself," one Asian diplomat is quoted as saying.
The news comes as AFP reports that Thai academics and pressure groups yesterday criticized a conference of top Asian government officials planned by the WTO as a ploy to win support for a new trade round. The WTO could use the upcoming WTO Regional Seminar on Trade and Environment for Developing and Least Developed Countries in Asia to "soften up" Asian nations ahead of the next WTO ministerial meeting later this year, the activist and rights organizations said.