Fracas over venue of WTO ministerial meet

By C. Rammanohar Reddy

Reports from Geneva indicate that the high-handedness of the U.S. and the EU in expressing their ``security concerns" about meeting in Doha, Qatar, for the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation, has created a fracas that threatens to wreck the very convening of the meeting, thereby unsettling their best laid plans to launch a new round of trade liberalisation talks next month.

Until ten days ago, officials of the WTO insisted that the meeting would be held as scheduled in Doha between November 9 and 12. But now the response to queries about the venue is ``No comment," meaning that they expect (hope) a change will take place. The reason for this shift in position is that at the `informal' meeting of ministers from 21 countries that was held in Singapore on October 13 and 14, Japan raised concerns about security, a position subsequently joined by the U.S. and the EU.

In what appeared to be a pre-arranged decision taken without consulting Qatar, Singapore then offered to be a ``replacement" venue with a scaled down ministerial meeting away from the presumed fallout of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. (In Singapore, Mr. Murasoli Maran, the Union Commerce Minister, said India had no problems going to Doha.)

The expectation then was that the Qatar Emirate would offer to stand down and let Singapore be the new host. But upset at what is seen as manoeuvres between the U.S., EU, Singapore and the WTO Secretariat, the Government of Qatar has so far refused to give up its right to hold the meeting. After a cabinet meeting on October 17 it announced that all preparations were on schedule. Qatar has particular reason to feel aggrieved by the attempts to push it aside since not only has it spent a considerable amount of money ($50 million) to organise the conference, it was the only one in late 2000 to offer to and bail out the WTO at a time when no country was willing to be the host - after the turmoil in Seattle in 1999. And while for weeks after September, the rumours in Geneva were that the conference would be shifted from Doha; the Qatari officials kept being reassured there no such possibility.

Complicating the situation is that the Arab countries and many developing countries - members of the Like-Minded Group at the WTO - have informally expressed their support to Qatar. They also have a self-interest in doing so since a logjam and a failure to hold the ministerial meeting next month means that the current momentum to launch a new round - to which many of them are opposed - could later fizzle out.

The WTO officials said that there was no plan for Mr. Mike Moore, the Director-General, to travel to Doha and plead for Qatar to drop out. Rubbing salt into the Qatari wound is that the October 18 communique at the APEC meeting in Shanghai called for a new round to be launched at next month's WTO conference - but made no mention of where the meet was to take place! And on the same day, Mr. Robert Zoellick, the U.S. Trade Representative, again raised security questions about Doha and his EU counterpart, Mr. Pascal Lamy, speaking in Paris said much the same, even as they insisted that the ministerial meet had to take place as scheduled. If Qatar does not give up its right to be the venue, one alternative that is being speculated is that there will be only a meeting in Geneva of the WTO's General Council - the administrative and decision-making body of the WTO where all countries are members - to discuss routine matters.

Another option is that Qatar, angry about Singapore stepping in as ``a spare tyre" as a Singapore minister called itself, may agree to Geneva as the venue for a mini-ministerial. But the Canton of Geneva will then have to cope with street protests, as it did in May 1998 during the second ministerial. All in all, a major mess caused by insensitive actions by the major trade powers, their allies and senior officials of the WTO Secretariat.

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