Leaders meet to revitalise WTO food trade talks
Australia are meeting in London this week for talks intended to
move forward the stalling WTO Doha negotiations on agricultural
tariffs.
The meeting could prove to be pivotal - while negotiators are committed to resolving some key issues by the end of April 2006, significant disagreements persist.
WTO director-general Pascal Lamy has already urged countries to intensify negotiations in order to conclude the current round of agricultural trade talks, urging negotiators to "make good on what was agreed".
Last minute negotiations at the World Trade Organisation's Hong Kong Ministerial in December, which discussed the breaking down of global trade barriers to agricultural products, resulted in an interim agreement that means negotiators have to return to the bargaining table this year.
The result was viewed as modest because it avoided earlier outright failures, though it did not secure any major breakthrough. But both the EU and the US now seem locked in a war of words, blaming each others lack of commitment for the slow progress being made.
The EU has already attacked the US for what it calls "seriously twisting the truth about the value of the European Unions agricultural market access offer in the Doha Round", claiming that "the cuts proposed by the EU offer are deeper than the average cuts agreed in the Uruguay Round."
With the original 1 January 2005 deadline long gone, ministers are fixed on a timetable that aims to finish the negotiations by the end of the year. But, as Lamy points out, this will only be achieved if participants step up their commitment.
The aim of the meeting is therefore to create consensus and give impetus to the wider negotiations in Geneva. The European Union, which will chair the meeting, will be represented by trade commissioner Peter Mandelson and agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
"I am convening this meeting to try and narrow some differences between some key players," said EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson.
"We came out of Hong Kong with a pretty clear idea of what we have to address and how we have to read across the whole understanding, but without an agreed level of ambition."
The EU says that it will continue to push others to match what it calls its "wide-ranging offer of October 2005, which offered the steepest farm support and agricultural tariff cuts ever offered by the European Union in a multilateral trade round."
The talks will be held in central London. They will start with an evening session on Friday 10 March and continue through Saturday.
