The poor flex muscles at WTO

Guardian News Service, London

By Wednesday afternoon, delegates in Doha were slumped in corridors, after losing three nights' sleep as the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations went down to the wire. This time it was India, supported by 12 other developing countries, who played the dramatic game of brinkmanship, threatening to walk out on the six days of negotiations.

The advantage shifted back and forth between north and south in the final hours. There was some frantic arm-twisting and tempting inducements were deployed behind closed doors to prevent a repeat of the Seattle collapse two years ago.

Finally, more than 24 hours late, a new round of trade talks has been duly launched. The relief is palpable on two counts: The world economy has been given an important confidence boost at a difficult time, while the WTO has managed to repair some of the damage to its credibility after Seattle.

However, the most significant story to emerge from the talks in the Gulf is the coming of political age of the developing country lobby within the WTO. Gone are the days when the developed countries could bully and manipulate to exact maximum advantage. At Doha, developing countries, led by large economies such as India, Brazil and South Africa, have proved far more effective at forming alliances to push through concessions.

They are finally beginning to exercise their numerical superiority in the 140-member body. And they have significant victories to celebrate. They won an important concession on one of the issues at the top of their Doha agenda: The clarification of the WTO's Trips agreement on intellectual property, and its recognition that drugs patents could be suspended in a public- health emergency (the battle received timely assistance from the anthrax scare, in which the U.S. considered breaking the Cipro patent and the Canadians actually did so).

The score sheet on agriculture and textiles is more patchy; France, with a presidential election next year, was loath to shift on agricultural subsidies and was rewarded with some obscure wording which leaves tough negotiations ahead, while on textiles the U.S. insisted it could make no more concessions without congressional approval.

Developing countries can still justifiably complain that many key clauses of the previous trade talks, the Uruguay Round, from which they stood to benefit have yet to be implemented.

But the most dramatic demonstration of the new power of the developing countries came on the last day when India succeeded in leading a rebellion against the EU's insistence on widening the Doha round to include the "new issues" such as investment, competition and government procurement.

This has been a source of bitter contention for several years with developing countries arguing that it overloads the agenda with a set of hugely complex subjects when there was still so much unfinished business from the previous round. India's stand effectively shelved all of the new issues until the next ministerial talks in two years: A triumph which left the EU cast as the villain of the piece, arrogantly running the risk of wrecking Doha because of its intransigence.

Doha marks a turning point. It was not the radical climax for which some campaigners hoped, but it is a significant shift in the balance of power in global trade negotiations away from a small coterie of rich industrialized nations. That shift is likely only to accelerate with the arrival of the WTO's newest member, China, and beyond that, the possibility of Russian membership.