WTO talks headed for failure?

By C. Rammanohar Reddy

DOHA, NOV. 13. As the clock kept ticking away to a midnight deadline of the World Trade Organisation's conference, trade ministers from both the rich and poor countries were frozen in their positions, persuading an African negotiator to say this evening that the ``gaps now seem too wide to be bridged'' to reach an agreement on the agenda for a new round of trade talks. But officials did not rule out a last-minute agreement saying the situation could quickly change if even one contentious issue was resolved.

A revised declaration put out earlier in the day satisfied only U.S. and Japan, with the Union Commerce Minister, Mr. Murasoli Maran, expressing ``strong disappointment'' that it did not reflect India's concerns. The statement proposed a major negotiating agenda that included agriculture, the environment, government procurement and industrial tariffs. The only softening was in foreign investment and competition policies, two of the ``new issues'' to which India was strongly opposed and where the revised proposal suggested only a continuation of a study process.

With ministers struggling to reach an agreement, it was almost certain that the conference would be extended by another day. The mood on a day which began with optimism had by the evening changed as there was the possibility of a repeat of the Seattle collapse in 1999. The U.S. was emerging as a mediator with Mr. Robert Zoellick, the U.S. Trade Representative, saying privately it had now fallen on him to broker a deal between the European Union and the developing countries.

The three blocs that were maintaining their positions were the E.U., India and the multi-group formation comprising the Africa- Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) economies, the least developed countries and the African countries. The third bloc continued to surprise most observers, holding firm on demanding concessions and refusing to agree to talks on any of the ``new issues.'' Referring to how the TRIPS agreement was negotiated at GATT, a senior diplomat from a least developed country said, ``There was one sentence on patents in 1986 and in the end we got the TRIPS monster; we are not going to repeat that mistake.''

The villain of Doha today was the E.U. which besides refusing to endorse the agenda for talks on farm trade was demanding that all the new issues should be on the negotiating agenda, so too environment and worse it wanted tough language on trade and labour standards, an old ghost that had returned to haunt the WTO.

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