ESCAP to hold another meet

By Sushma Ramachandran

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 5. With the Mexico informal ministerial conference having just concluded, countries in the Asia-Pacific region will hold yet another preparatory meeting in the run up to the Doha conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The meeting is being convened by a U.N. agency - the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) - despite concerns over the neutrality of the conference by major donor countries such as Japan and the Netherlands.

The 61-member ESCAP has decided to hold the meeting at Bangkok from September 24 to 25 as part of a full ``WTO week''. Apart from the ministerial level conference, there will be a meeting of experts on the future WTO agenda and a official level talks on trade policy for countries of the Greater Mekong sub-region.

The visiting ESCAP executive director, Mr. Kim Hak-Su, said that the agenda for the meeting would include a review of the Uruguay Round agreements including the sensitive agreement on agriculture. as well as a look at the agenda for the proposed new round of trade negotiations. He said about half of the ESCAP members were in the WTO with ten preparing for accession including China.

Conceding that ESCAP's donor countries such as Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea had expressed concerns over the neutrality of ESCAP at the conference, Mr. Kim said ESCAP had assured that it would be neutral and would seek to provide all the necessary factors to member countries to enable them to prepare for the Doha meet. Significantly, in a speech earlier this year, he had said, ``bringing new issues on the agenda would be divisive. It would threaten a repeat of the Seattle debacle''. Any new round of negotiations must be predicated on assuring developing countries a level-playing field and removing existing imbalances by focussing on faithful implementation of existing agreements and built-in agenda.

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