Bid to create new climate for global trade talks

By P. S. Suryanarayana

BANGKOK, FEB. 19. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development which concluded its tenth session here on Friday evening, agreed to do away with the concept of ``coherence'' among international financial institutions.

The relevant provisions in the Bangkok Declaration, regarding the avoidance of the idea of ``coherence'' in the absence of a consensus on it, were as follows:

The UNCTAD expressed ``conviction'' about being able to make progress ``in the effort of achieving more effective coordination and cooperation,'' instead of coherence, ``among governments and among international institutions in dealing with global interdependence and development.''

On a related plane, the UNCTAD said ``there is also a need for more effective cooperation and coordination,'' not coherence, ``among multilateral institutions.''

In the earlier drafts of the Bangkok Declaration, the operative phrase was ``coherence'' in these two formulations instead of ``cooperation and coordination''. The West agreed to budge from an insistence on ``coherence'' only after maintaining that the perceived hidden meaning was being overstated. However, the Western delegates did not view their action as a shift from their basic position, given the absence of a direct nexus between the UNCTAD and international financial institutions.

An area where India was not averse to the idea of ``coherence,'' in a totally different meaning of compatibility and complementarity, was a passage in the Declaration that noted that ``the Bangkok conference has particularly emphasised the need for increased policy coherence at the national and international level.''

The idea of ``coherence,'' with this distinctive connotation acceptable to India, was incorporated in the context of efforts by the UNCTAD Secretary-General, Mr. Rubens Ricupero, to propagate this non-contentious nuance.

On a more positive note, as distinct from the highly technical move of holding back the Western pressure to impose a suspected hidden agenda on the Third World, the Indian delegation played a key role in evolving a critical formulation in the Declaration.

It was noted that ``in an increasingly knowledge- intensive world, support (by the developed bloc) for knowledge- based development is necessary for effective participation of developing countries in the world economy.''

The central theme of the Bangkok Declaration was an effort to create a new climate for ``global dialogue and dynamic engagment'' across the development divide.

This effort was featured merely by the enunciation of principles on trade and development issues in the unfolding context that was defined by the recent fiasco in Seattle.

Another document adopted was the Plan of Action which, as adopted by a conference panel late last night, covered trade liberalisation, food security, democracy as a factor of development and market access as also debt relief for the disadvantaged countries.

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