New WTO round not needed: Maran

By C. Rammanohar Reddy

DOHA, NOV. 10. ``A new round of trade talks at the WTO is not necessary, it is evil,'' Mr. Murasoli Maran, Union Minister for Commerce, told reporters at Doha, adding that in his view a successful outcome of the fourth ministerial conference of the WTO would be one that ``showed flexibility to the developing and least-developed countries''.

Mr. Maran's remark came when reminded about his recent statement that the WTO was a necessary evil. He said that it was unfortunate that while the world was united after September 11, ``an attempt is now being made to divide the world into the developed and developing countries by using the September 11 events to force us to accept new obligations''.

The Minister minced no words in his criticism that by not addressing the problem of tariff peaks and tariff escalation, the developed countries wanted to keep the poor countries as ``permanently developing''.

Giving an example, he said, ``if you export raw leather to the developed country markets you pay low import duty; but if you want to export shoes it attracts a very high tariff. They want to keep us as developing countries.''

When asked about Mr. A.B. Vajpayee's meeting with the U.S. President, Mr. George Bush, Mr. Maran said he was under no instructions and had come with an unambiguous mandate to ``stand firm''. He had answers to all questions thrown at him, all of them emphasising India's position. India was opposed to negotiations on the new issues of foreign investment, competition, trade facilitation and competition because the decision in 1996 was to take up negotiations only if there was ``explicit consensus''.

Mr. Maran said the nomenclature of ``a round'' was not important; what was important was the content of a future work programme. He repeated what he had said in his plenary speech this morning, that such a WTO programme would have to address the implementation issues of the developing countries and stick to the mandated negotiations on agriculture and services. The Minister said India could live with the text on agriculture, which he called a deal worked out between the U.S. and E.U.

China accession

China today formally joined the WTO as the 143rd member when in a brief ceremony the country was admitted to the organisation. The decision ends 15 years of protracted negotiations since China made its application in 1986. China will now have to formally approve the protocol before it begins participating in the WTO process.

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