WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (AFP): World Bank chief Robert Zoellick suggested Monday limits for a proposed agricultural safeguard that torpedoed World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade talks last month, saying the world's poor need a successful Doha round.
"Given the high food prices around the world and the need for poor people to lower their cost of food, it just does not make sense for the Doha negotiations to founder upon this barrier," Zoellick said.
The WTO's Doha round of talks collapsed in late July due to a row between India and the US over a special safeguard mechanism allowing nations to impose a special tariff on agricultural goods if imports surge or prices fall.
Zoellick said that major trade partners need to return to the negotiating table to find a compromise to the proposed special agricultural tariffs demanded by developing nations to protect their farmers.
"Working with WTO director general Pascal Lamy, the United States, India, and China should come up with a compromise," said Zoellick, the American president of the poverty-fighting development institution.
"Brazil, a developing country that is both a major agricultural exporter and home to many poor farmers, can help. Indonesia and Australia may be in a position to contribute to a solution too."
Lamy is scheduled to meet with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab later this week in Washington.
At the WTO talks in Geneva, the US refused to accept Indian proposals that developing nations should be allowed to boost duties by an additional 25 per cent on farm products if imports surged by 15 per cent.
Washington insisted extra duties should be allowed only if imports rose by 40 per cent.
Zoellick offered several suggestions to breach the impasse.
Noting that it can take two or more years to challenge the grounds for imposing a safeguard, in which time the new barrier blocks trade, Zoellick said: "A compromise could create a speedy due process for challenges, without appeal."
The World Bank president said that all parties seemed to agree that safeguards should not be imposed to block normal trade flows, but they disagree on how much of a change warrants the temporary protection of a safeguard.
An acceptable way for a country to determine whether a safeguard is justified, "could require examination of factors in addition to increased trade flows."
"Under current WTO practice, the economy imposing a safeguard decides how much protection is appropriate. But this protection could be disciplined and limited," he said.
Zoellick, a former US trade representative, welcomed an initiative by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to restart the Doha round.
"President Lula of Brazil has called on the parties not to let the WTO negotiations fail because of differences over a special safeguard for agriculture. He is right," said the president of the 185-nation institution.
"There is too much at stake to let this problem derail a global trade package that could expand economic growth and opportunity by cutting cut subsidies drastically, lowering tariffs significantly, and opening up services markets," he said.
India, too, has signaled it is willing to return to Geneva during a visit by Lamy last week aimed at kick-starting negotiations.
Meanwhile, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said yesterday world trade talks that collapsed last month are not dead, even as he focused attention on shoring up the South American trade bloc Mercosur.
"The failure to reach consensus in the Doha round in Geneva is not synonymous with paralysis," Amorim said "We are making progress on several points," he said.
Brazil has been making efforts in recent weeks to revive the negotiations held under the auspices of the WTO. India, too, is saying it would like to return to the negotiating table.
The talks ended in July with no deal, because of differences between developed and developing countries over farmer protections. A key issue blocking a pact was a dispute between India and the United States over cotton.
Amorim said the collapse "affected the poor countries the worst, because agricultural barriers and subsidies deprived populations in the poor countries of the opportunity to compete in the world market, retarding their development."
He was speaking at a meeting of the Mercosur parliament, which represents the trade bloc grouping Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Venezuela is scheduled to also soon join the bloc.
With a WTO deal out of reach, Brazil is concentrating on Mercosur as a way of improving trade prospects as well as laying the political groundwork for political unity among South American nations should world trade negotiations resume.
Amorim said Brazil intended to reactivate Mercosur's talks with the European Union which had been put on ice since 2004.
Brazil also planned to push for the abolition of double customs tariffs on goods within the regional bloc, and to find a way of sharing customs revenues.
