GENEVA, July 20 (AFP): Brazil is willing to wait until 2012 in order to secure a better deal on the negotiating table at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), its Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said yesterday.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, where WTO talks are set to enter a crucial new phase Monday, he said a failure next week would put back the conclusion of an agreement by another three or four years.
The Geneva meeting will bring together around 30 big WTO players in a bid to salvage the so-called Doha round of trade liberalisation talks, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001 and which has struggled ever since with developed and developing countries alike refusing to budge on their core interests.
Amorim is the developing world's main representative in the WTO talks and the public face of the G20, the grouping of developing countries co-led by Brazil and India.
He is seen as a hard negotiator committed to seeing wealthy countries cut agricultural subsidies that are barriers to farm imports from Brazil and other nations.
Amorim accused developed countries of demanding too much from other countries. "One cannot snatch the maximum from the weakest and give only the minimum in exchange," he said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the end of May that the European Union, which is negotiating with the WTO, had "nothing" to gain from emerging countries on industrial products and services and had already made too many concessions over agricultural issues.
On this, Amorim said the agreement on the table with the WTO would oblige Brazil to reduce its customs duties on half its imports and that its highest duties would come down by a third from around 35 to 25 per cent.
On services he said that Brazil would make an offer Thursday in Geneva after three days of negotiation dedicated to agriculture and industrial products.
Amorim, who had talks on Saturday with WTO head Pascal Lamy, said he had asked him to allow enough time for states to negotiate possible changes to draft agreements on the table.
At issue in next week's talks are agricultural and manufacturing trade barriers. The industrialised countries are seeking greater access to developing markets for their manufactured goods, while in return developing countries want lower farm subsidies and agricultural tariffs in the developed world.
Meanwhile, trade ministers from more than 30 countries, deeply divided and still clinging to core interests, mount another bid Monday to nail down a global trade accord before the arrival of a new US president early next year.
After nearly seven years of fruitless haggling, ministers will try to bridge gaps on trade-opening measures under the Doha Development Agenda, launched with great fanfare and hope in the Qatari capital in November 2001.
But the negotiations, under the auspices of the WTO, are deadlocked as developed and developing countries alike have been slow to make concessions on trade in agriculture, goods and services.
Their representatives will gather in Geneva knowing that from next January, the United States will have a new administration and a new Congress whose attitudes toward trade liberalisation are at this point uncertain.
The administration of George W Bush is therefore anxious to secure an agreement now, hoping to make it hard if not impossible for a new Congress to reject it.
But the United States is not the only party to the talks that needs to keep an eye on its domestic audience.
The European Union is also struggling to show a united front following a public spat between EU chief trade negotiator Peter Mandelson and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Mandelson is viewed with suspicion in Paris as a "neoliberal" prepared to sacrifice France's hefty agricultural sector for the sake of a deal.
Sarkozy bluntly asserted earlier this month that "conditions are not right" for a WTO agreement.
