GENEVA, June 22 (Agencies): The World Trade Organisation (WTO) sought Friday to rekindle hopes of a global trade deal after talks between four major powers collapsed.
The WTO's Doha round has received another blow with a crucial Group of Four (G4) meeting in Germany having failed. Negotiators Friday (June 22) were set to plan their next steps at the WTO after talks between four of the world's big trade powers collapsed the previous day, throwing the future of global WTO talks on free commerce into deeper crisis.
Trade and agriculture ministers from the four governments began what was intended to be almost a week of talks aiming to reach a breakthrough on slashing farm subsidies and lowering hurdles for goods crossing borders.
The early end of discussions mirrors last July's collapse, when negotiations among the four governments plus Japan and Australia disintegrated, prompting WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy to suspend talks.
Negotiators from the US and the European Union said their Indian and Brazilian counterparts offered nothing new to unblock trade talks that have dragged on for almost six years. India and Brazil blamed the U.S. and the European Union's unwillingness to cut farm aid and import duties on commodities.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and the European Union's Peter Mandelson, headed for Geneva after a meeting in Potsdam, Germany, failed to overcome divisions.
Success at Potsdam by the G4, also attended by Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, was seen as important to salvaging the WTO's so-called Doha round after nearly six years of frustrated negotiations.
An Indian embassy official denied an earlier report that Nath also had gone to Geneva.
Report from New Delhi said, India said it will not compromise on its stand on agriculture market access in the WTO's Doha round of negotiations, further reducing chances of an accord in global trade talks.
India will still work to make the Doha round of trade talks successful, Kamal Nath, the nation's minister for commerce and industry, told reporters in New Delhi after returning from Potsdam, Germany, where negotiations among four major World Trade Organisation governments collapsed yesterday.
The collapse of the talks has reduced the chances of an agreement on a trade accord that would add billions of dollars to the global economy. Elections in the U.S. and India also present a threat to future progress if an accord can't be wrapped up before next year .
On the other hand Brazil's foreign minister and top trade official said today a global trade deal is still possible, despite the collapse of the talks in Potsdam.
'I don't think that the Doha Round is dead, even though it is agonising,' Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told reporters in Geneva.
By contrast, the failure of the talks in Potsdam does spell the end of the so-called 'G4' group, he said, after Brazil and India walked out of the talks with the EU and the US.
'The G4 as such is dead,' Amorim said bluntly.
Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush has expressed disappointment at the breakdown of global trade talks.
Following the breakdown, which developing- and rich-country representatives blamed on each other, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy summoned the WTO's Doha steering group for a Friday meeting to underline the search for an accord would go on.
"Convergence among these (the G4) members would have been helpful to pave the way towards multilateral convergence. But helpful does not mean indispensable," Lamy said in a statement.
"I now call on the members of the G4 to contribute to the multilateral negotiating process, which will continue as of today in Geneva."
Launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001, the WTO's latest intended free trade pact was meant to steady the global economy after the September 11 attacks on the United States and address inequities making it difficult for poor country goods to compete on the global market.
But it faced problems from the start, mainly over the issue of agriculture, which is highly sensitive almost everywhere.
Washington and Brussels have demanded that any deal that significantly cuts agricultural protections must open new export markets around the world in farming, manufacturing and services.
Developing economies are looking for new opportunities to export their own farm and manufacturing goods. They argue rich countries should not expect big new market access in exchange for cutting their trade-distorting farm subsidies and tariffs.
Trade sources said that the United States, which was widely blamed last year when a similar G4 failure brought the round to the brink of collapse, had offered deeper subsidy cuts in Potsdam, suggesting an annual ceiling of $17 billion.
But Brazil and India said it was still not enough and were unwilling to move on industrial tariffs, they said.
While trade officials warned it would be hard for the full 150-member WTO to meet an end-July target for a Doha deal without a preparatory agreement in Potsdam, ministers insisted the multilateral process was not yet dead.
Despite the Potsdam setback, trade officials said that the heads of the main WTO negotiating committees on farm and industrial goods would go ahead and present draft proposals for bridging differences as planned by the end of next week.
Time is running short, however. Lamy has said that without a breakthrough by August, the negotiations could be put on hold for several more years or even fail altogether, leading to a rise in protectionist measures and trade disputes.
Global trade talks in deep crisis following G4 meet collapse
FE Team | Published: June 23, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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