WTO scraps ministerial meeting as US, Brazil trade blame

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GENEVA, Dec 13 (AFP): Hopes that a long-delayed World Trade Organisation (WTO) global free-trade pact could be clinched this month were dashed yesterday, dealing a blow for supporters who had claimed an agreement would boost the world economy.
WTO head Pascal Lamy scrapped plans to hold a ministerial meeting citing the "unacceptably high" risk of failure, while Brazil pointed the finger at the "greedy" United States.
Lamy said the economic crisis made it "more pressing" that a global deal was reached in 2009, while Europe's top trade official urged engagement with US president-elect Barack Obama to organise a meeting next year.
"We have come tantalisingly close to the finish line ... having come this far, we must not give up," EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton urged in a statement.
Lamy had spent weeks trying to organise a meeting to bring the seven-year-long Doha round of trade liberalisation talks to an end, but admitted there were still too many gaps to bridge.
"In my view ... calling ministers to try to finalise modalities by the end of the year would be running an unacceptably high risk of failure which could damage not only the (Doha) round but also the WTO system as a whole," the Frenchman told ambassadors from the WTO's 153 member states.
The United States and Brazil immediately began trading accusations over who was to blame for the lack of a breakthrough, following a familiar pattern set by countries each time a meeting fails.
Ministers had spent 10 days in Geneva at the end of July trying to clinch a deal before an eventual collapse saw the US blame India for the failure.
Lamy cited two main contentious elements tripping up progress this time: mechanisms to protect poor farmers and a so-called sectoral initiative which proposes especially sharp tariff cuts to certain sectors.
On these two issues, there was "a lack of political will to accommodate the demands from others," assessed Lamy.
Brazil pointedly blamed the US for blocking progress on negotiations, particularly on the sectoral initiative.
"The big issue is sectorals and I already gave the reason because there is an effort to rebalance the package in favour of one rich country. Of course it's a powerful country," Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told reporters in Geneva without mentioning the United States by name.
Signing up to the sectoral initiative is voluntary, although Washington wants developing giants Brazil, India and China to participate, arguing that the initiative would be meaningless in some sectors if it did not involve them.
Amorim, who was speaking ahead of Lamy's announcement, added: "If there is failure or postponement, the most appropriate word that would apply would be greed."
Responding to Brazil's charge, the US ambassador to the WTO Peter Allgeier said: "That's inaccurate."
Instead he said that certain developing nations had hindered progress on sectors, claiming "they are not even willing to identify even a single sector that they are willing to negotiate on."
Negotiators have in the past weeks made a renewed push to conclude the long-stalled Doha round of negotiations for a global trade pact, in an attempt to make good a pledge by Group of Twenty (G20) leaders in November to find a deal.