|
||
|
Going
round in circles about a new round? Lausanne, 26 Oct 99 -- A two-day ministerial meeting of 25 countries, the so-called "Friends of the Round," ended in Lausanne Tuesday with key protagonists as far apart as before, and the WTO no nearer a solution on a draft declaration for Seattle. The meeting convened by the Swiss Economic Affairs Minister, Mr. Pascal Couchepin, could only agree that their representatives in Geneva should focus their efforts over the next few days on "the identification" of issues for negotiations that are essential to achieving a consensus in Seattle, and once this has been done, define "the parameters" of negotiations on each issue." An official from one of the countries present said that the discussions had not resolved any issue, and the views remain sharply apart. The United States wants the Seattle agenda and negotiations to focus only on "market access" issues (in agriculture, services and industrial tariffs), while the EC and Japan want a comprehensive round of negotiations including investment and competition. "You can't have investment rules without competition rules, and the US is not prepared to have negotiations on competition that includes the anti-dumping and other such instruments," the official said. And key developing countries focus on implementation and on the built-in agenda, but are not prepared for any new issues or a comprehensive round, nor are they prepared to have labour standards and environment issues negotiated at the WTO. The official said: "At the moment there is a deadlock. But the US and EC may cut a deal, and try to apply pressure jointly on developing countries. At that stage, how far they would stand up and stick to their positions is anybody's guess." Another developing country official said there had been no progress at Lausanne. But those developing countries working together had to make a determined effort to stand together, and not try to cut individual small deals. "And if we do not get commitments and solutions now to the implementation issues and the redressal of asymmetries and inequities in the existing agreements, at Seattle and decide on the remaining ones to be solved in the first year, nothing would happen once the majors cut a deal in the substantive negotiations." Asked at a press conference, whether the Lausanne meeting has enabled the Geneva process to move forward and the square- brackets in the chairman's text could be eliminated, Amb. Ali Mchumo of Tanzania, chairman of the General Council, would only say: "Ministers have provided us a methodology on how to move forward in the next few days, and if they will keep to their commitments here and instruct their ambassadors in Geneva to be 'flexible', we may be able to move forward in our effort to draft a declaration and knock out square brackets from the text." Mchumo later said he would be resuming the informal heads of delegation process from Wednesday. Last week, the HOD process had discussed agriculture and then had taken up implementation issues. And in smaller, 'green room' meetings convened by him, the WTO head, Mike Moore had taken up agriculture, but by the weekend, these talks broke up in disarray - with the US and the Cairns group taking a strong stand on the agriculture talks and the parameters to be set, while the EC and its supporters not budging an inch beyond agreeing to continuation of the reform process spelt out in Art. 20 of the Agreement on Agriculture. Moore's efforts to move on and take up the Singapore issues failed when the Cairns group made clear they would not discuss anything until there was agreement on the framework for agriculture negotiations as part of the built-in agenda. The press conference was by Couchepin and the ministers from the 24 other countries who were at the meeting. And the answers showed that the differences between the US and EC have not narrowed, nor the gap between the developing countries and the major industrialized countries on the "implementation issues". And while everyone at the press conference spoke about the next round being a "Development Round", they did not even seem to have a common view of what such a development round would involve. The WTO Director-General, Mike Moore, who twice spoke about the "development round", listed as subjects for such "development" all the demands of the US or the EC - investment, transparency in government procurement, trade facilitation, industrial tariffs, and about need for "coherence" and issues like debt, for which the WTO was not responsible he claimed, to be tackled elsewhere. The Couchepin statement said in its operative paragraphs: "The Ministers agreed that their representatives in Geneva should focus their efforts over the next few days on the identification of issues that are essential to achieving a consensus in Seattle. Once this has been done, the parameters of the negotiations to be conducted one each issue will have to be defined. "The Ministers confirmed their determination to overcome the remaining divergences and to adopt in Seattle, a balanced programme of negotiations that would address the interests of all WTO Members. Drawing on the lessons and analyses of the Lausanne meeting, the Ministers agreed to show the flexibility needed to give the preparatory process a new impetus so that they would have a clear, concise and explicit basis for a final decision." On the implementation issues and complaints of imbalances, and proposals advanced by developing countries, the US Trade Representative, Mrs.Charlene Barshevsky, made clear that full implementation of existing commitments was vitally important for developing and industrialized countries. But the US could not agree to renegotiation of existing agreements. There were however a range of other issues involving capacity building and technical assistance that would need to be looked into. The EU Trade Commissioner, Mr. Pascal Lamy was more suave and said the EC understood "implementation" was an important topic for developing countries. The EC was ready to look at imbalances in implementation of agreements and rebalance them, but not to changing any agreements. Earlier, the Egyptian Minister, Yousouf Boutros Ghali, had said that the developing world supported an open multilateral trading system, but wanted to be full partners. Many of the ministers had said the next round should be called a "development round". But the Uruguay Round and its agreements had created many inequities and developing countries faced problems which should be addressed. In answers to other questions, Lamy said that while there was no convergence between the US and EC views, the meetings in Lausanne, including bilateral meetings, had been useful. The EC hoped that the meeting this week (in Washington between EC President and the US President) could result in more convergence. At this time they were all concerned on how the agenda for Seattle was set, and on this the US and EC had differences. Mrs.Barshevsky said that a range of issues would need to be accommodated and everyone had agreed to be flexible. There was a large degree of convergence on launching a new round and for undertaking liberalisation. Otherwise, there would be severe consequences in the global economy. "We need trade liberalisation, not only for our countries, but to sustain a smooth global economy." But there were gaps and these needed to be filled. Comments from Australia for the Cairns Group, the EC, Japan and the US left little doubt that while all agreed that everyone was committed to launch a further reform process in agriculture, their basic differences on the parameters of negotiations remained. And while all of them agreed that the further process in agriculture should be based on Art.20 of the Agreement on Agriculture, there was considerable disagreement on what this article envisaged or provided for. Lamy made clear that what is to be negotiated in agriculture in the next round could not be negotiated and agreed now, but only in the process of negotiations. It was absurd to say the EC was not prepared. "We are ready and have our baggage, and we can board the train, provided others have their baggage too." And for Lamy, clearly the baggage included willingness of others, particularly developing countries, to agree to negotiate investment and other EC priorities. In a lengthy statement, spelling out the various issues including investment, competition, anti-dumping etc that Japan wanted to see included in the negotiations, the Japanese Minister for International Trade and Industry, Takashi Fukaya, insisted that the agriculture talks could only be on the basis of Art. 20 - which provided a clear framework of the next negotiations and long-term objective. But the idea of bringing agricultural trade under the same WTO rules and disciplines as trade in other goods was nowhere mentioned in Article 20, he argued, to reject the view of the Cairns group and others for agriculture and other products being treated alike. While Lamy and Japan insisted on a comprehensive round, including investment and other issues, Barshevsky suggested there were some issues ripe for negotiations. Others could be carried forward in a work programme, and taken up later. On the issue of labour rights, Alex Erwin of South Africa said this was not discussed explicitly, but the developing countries had made unequivocal statements at the meeting that they were not ready to go beyond what was in the Singapore declaration -- namely for the WTO and ILO secretariats to be in contact, and for labour issues to be addressed at the ILO. Lamy said that agreements in any new round of negotiations would need to be ratified, and public opinion in the North would not agree unless the labour and environment issues were tackled. The USTR also said that it was necessary to satisfy their public opinion and take steps to make clear that the WTO was not against labour standards or protection of environment. Only this would remove misconceptions among the public. In a speech at the Ministerial meeting, distributed to the media outside, Brazil's Felippe Lampreia had said Brazil believed there were certain issues in the relation between trade and environment which deserved closest attention and could be the subject of rules. They could continue work on these in the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment, "as long as they do not lead to disguised restrictions to trade." As for labour standards, Brazil saw no purpose "in linking labour standards to trade rules, besides protectionist motivations." In response to a question, the WTO head, Mike Moore, spoke of a common view that the next round should be a development round, and mentioned as the issues of development -- transparency in government procurement, trade facilitation, e-commerce and industrial tariffs. And later to a question that was not even addressed to him but to the ministers present, as to how the gap between the developing country view of imbalances in the WTO agreements that needed to be redressed could be bridged with the views of the US and EC that agreements could not be re-negotiated, Mr.Moore spoke of coherence, the debt burden of countries and other issues for which, he argued, the WTO was not responsible but which needed to be dealt with in other fora. (SUNS4535) The above article first appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) of which Chakravarthi Raghavan is the Chief Editor. [c] 1999, SUNS - All rights reserved. May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or service without specific permission from SUNS. This limitation includes incorporation into a database, distribution via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists, print media or broadcast. For information about reproduction or multi-user subscriptions please contact < suns@igc.org >
|
||
