WTO agenda setting complicated
WTO agenda setting complicated
SINGAPORE (JP): Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry,
Yeo Cheow Tong, suggested yesterday that rules be established to
guide countries in determining which issues are relevant to be
discussed at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Yeo told the closing session of the two-day World Trade
Congress here that without clear-cut rules, the first ministerial
meeting of the WTO here in December might be overloaded with
irrelevant issues.
Yeo pointed to the different stances between the developed and
developing countries regarding emerging issues that should be
brought up at the meeting.
He said that several of the issues which have been raised --
mostly by the developed countries -- should be tested to
ascertain their relevance to international trade.
Among the most contentious issues preoccupying the discourses
during the two-day meeting here were corruption, investment and
competition rules and labor standards.
"The proponents of these issues should clearly and
unambiguously demonstrate their linkage with trade. Otherwise,
they would not be relevant for discussion at the WTO meeting,"
Yeo said.
The emerging trade-related issues are among the five-point
agenda suggested by Singapore for the ministerial meeting. The
others include a review of the implementation of commitments, an
endorsement of the results of negotiations in services, a report
from the Committee on Trade and Environment and the initiation of
the preparatory process to advance work on built-in agenda.
He emphasized the fear on the part of the developing countries
that the issues on the proposed agenda might divert WTO from its
important task of implementing the agreements reached under the
Uruguay Round negotiations, and of completing ongoing
negotiations on unfinished business.
"We need a mechanism to systematically evaluate and -- where
necessary -- incrementally address emerging issues within the
WTO," he pointed out.
He argued that even some issues which were trade-related
should be addressed by the WTO in an innovative and educative
manner to help raise awareness among members to a common level.
The developed countries, however, see the upcoming ministerial
meeting as the best opportunity to start negotiations on those
issues, because the next ministerial meeting would not take place
until 1998.
"By waiting for subject matter that is of obvious relevance to
trade liberalization, we would run the risk of the WTO to be
caught lagging far behind the reality of economic integration,"
Jean Pierre Landau, France's under-secretary for external
economic relations at the ministry of economics and finance
argued yesterday.
If that happened, Landau said, the WTO might become
progressively irrelevant, whereas its main task is to be at the
forefront of the moves towards greater integration.vin)