Fresh hopes seen for relaunch of trade talks
Fresh hopes seen for relaunch of trade talks
P. Parameswaran Agence France-Presse Washington
Developing and developed nations have neared consensus on several contentious trade issues giving fresh hopes for the relaunch of the Doha Round of global talks, Malaysian's trade minister said here on Monday.
Rafidah Aziz said after talks with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick that the "general agreement" reached among World Trade Organization (WTO) members was on the so-called "Singapore" issues.
They comprised trade facilitation, transparency in government procurement, cross-border investment and competition.
"My discussions with Zoellick did allude to some positive trends of people moving forward their positions -- meaning from their hardline positions to one that is more amenable to compromise," Rafidah said at a business forum in Washington.
Malaysia has been an influential champion of developing nations and an ardent critic of the West in the political and trade fronts.
Rafidah said Zoellick "confirmed" during their meeting Monday that the European Union, for example, "was willing now to just focus on trade facilitation and no longer" on the other issues -- transparency in government procurement, cross-border investment and competition.
The EU and Japan had been pushing for all the four issues -- fleshed at a Singapore meeting several years ago -- to be included in the Doha Round, much to the chagrin of developing countries which consider the issues as not of immediate priority for fueling global trade, she said.
She hoped that Japan would follow in the footsteps of EU or "it is going to be an isolated country."
Asked at the forum whether there was now virtual consensus to pursue trade facilitation in the Doha Round with the other three issues relegated to working group discussions, Rafidah said: "When you talk about virtual consensus, I think so.
"People are so averse to having universal rules on investment and even government transparency and government procurement and on competition policy," she added.
"I will say that there is that agreement, not consensus, but general agreement that trade facilitation can come on board," said Rafidah, a trade minister for the last 18 years and regarded as doyen among her peers.
"For as long as trade facilitation elements that are going to be negotiated does not cause undue burden to anyone or business, that should be okay," she added.
In a separate development, EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler said on Monday at a meeting of European farm ministers in Glengariff, Ireland that the commission had proposed scrapping EU agricultural export subsidies.
The offer was made on condition that key European trading partners likewise took steps to reduce financial support for exports.
Zoellick welcomed the move and in turn promised to remove export credits that act as export subsidies, and to negotiate new rules to prevent food aid from displacing commercial sales.
Differences over agricultural export subsidies foiled multilateral efforts to tear down global trade barriers, a goal adopted with great fanfare by the World Trade Organization at a ministerial conference in the Qatari capital Doha in November 2001.
The trade negotiations were placed on the back burner after the failure of a WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003.
Rafidah said since the Cancun debacle, the "smaller voices" are beginning to be heard.
"Now they realize that it is no point pushing issues that you can't have consensus upon."
Rafidah felt there could be some positive developments by July.
"We are hoping to get something done by July in Geneva where the (WTO) general council should meet and try to collate all the various positions and see what areas there is a route towards consensus," she said.