Sheila Mathrani GENEVA
HONG KONG China's Ambassador Harbinson has achieved what other previous WTO General Council chairmen did not do in order to preserve the WTO's mandate as a consensus-based and rule-based organisation that takes into consideration the objections and wishes of all it members, particularly the majority.
The Doha Ministerial Draft Declaration presented very late, and within less than the ten-day notice for the agenda as specified in the rules, does not take the developing countries into consideration but has been prompted by the demands of the trading majors.
The implementation agenda of the developing countries do not correct the inequity and imbalances in the rules and their applications but are now all subject to and the rules negotiations which is intended to maintain the "basic concepts and principles underlying them."
Yet the Ministers are intended to affirm their "collective responsibility to ensure internal transparency and effective participation of all Members".
With less than 10 days to go to the WTO's fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, developing countries are in a quandary how to combat the draft declaration for the Ministerial Conference presented to them on the 28 October by the chairman of the General Council, and Ambassador of Hongkong China, Stuart Harbinson, and crafted with the assistance of the WTO Secretariat, which is so heavily tilted towards the wishes of the EU and the US and has disregarded the objections and wishes of the developing countries, particularly the African and ACP group and LDCs, that its objectivity is in question.
According to trade guru Chakravarti Raghavan, who has been following GATT issues since decades, Harbinson's Doha Ministerial Declaration is "perhaps the most biased document yet to emerge in such a process in the 53-year history of the trading system -- in terms of what they are asked to take on board and negotiate for new obligations, and in a process that makes the old 1986 Punta des Este declaration and its modifications in the 1989 mid-term review innocuous" and one which calls for "economic talibanisation of the WTO".
Raghavan analyses the three difficult options facing developing countries in whose interests the DMD is not tilted. One could be that a third draft be presented by Harbinson to them at the General Council next day which clearly formulates the alternatives given to him by developing countries under each work programe.
The next option would be to send an accompanying letter or report to Member countries must first approve of as an integral part of his draft documents where the various other views are clearly spelt out and which includes the General Council report with the formal statements by the various members.
Raghavan proposes that if none of these proposals are done member countries could withold their consensus to Harbinson presenting any document. And in case none of these assurances are given, countries could refuse to agree to waive the 10-day notice for the agenda.
However, this depends on a concerted approach by the aggrieved WTO member countries.