Argentina blames US, EU for trade negotiation failures

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BUENOS AIRES, June 23 (Xinhua): The Argentine government said yesterday that the "intransigence" of the United States and the European Union led to the failure of the recent Group of Four (G4) trade negotiations.
The United States and the EU have not been able to understand the real meaning of the Doha mandate of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said in a communique.
Negotiations among the major G4 players-the United States, the EU, Brazil and India-collapsed in Potsdam, Germany, Thursday. The G4 had planned to bridge its gaps on crucial issues such as agriculture trade and industrial market access, which would be helpful to pave the way for convergence among all WTO members.
Taiana said Argentina is "disgruntled" at the failure of the G4 meeting and appreciated the standpoint of Brazil and India, the main negotiators for developing countries.
Brazil and India said the United States and EU were demanding too high a price for cutting their trade-distorting farming subsidies.
The United States and the EU said Brazil and India refused to offer significant new market openings in manufacturing.
Heads of delegations of the WTO's 150 members met Friday at the WTO headquarters in Geneva to discuss the next steps of the trade talks after the collapse of the G4 meeting.
Meanwhile, Russia's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will be completed by the end of this year, a senior Russian trade official said at an Internet conference yesterday.
The multilateral negotiations will resume in Geneva this July and may lead to the completion of the negotiations, Maxim Medvedkov, trade negotiations department chief at the economic development and trade ministry, was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
A final estimate of possible consequences of the Russian entry into the WTO for the domestic industries will be released in August, he said. Russia is the largest economy still outside the Geneva-based world trade body. It signed a bilateral WTO agreement with the United States last year, clearing the last major hurdle to its accession.