Filipino anti-World Trade Organisation (WTO) protesters dump imported vegetables on a farmer to symbolise their opposition to the WTO Agreement on Agriculture during a rally in Manila yesterday. The sixth WTO meeting of 149 rich and poor nations hopes a December 13-18 ministerial meeting in Hong Kong will inject momentum into struggling global free trade talks. - REUTERS
HONG KONG (AP):
AN IMPASSE between rich and poor nations over farm trade threatens to undermine progress at this week's World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting, Trade Ministers said yesterday.
Delegates from 149 countries have gathered for the six-day talks, which start today, to work toward an eventual global treaty that would cut trade barriers.
The meeting in this Asian citadel of free trade was meant to wrap up the so-called Doha Round of WTO negotiations, which were kicked-off in 2001 in Qatar's capital to pay particular attention to poor nations' trade concerns.
But developing nations say the United States, European Union and other rich economies have failed to deliver on that commitment due to their reluctance to cut agricultural tariffs and farm subsidies, blocking poor countries' access to those lucrative markets.
"Now it is clear that unless a miracle occurs - and I'm not even sure what kind of miracle - we won't have a final deal ... in Hong Kong," Brazil's Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, told reporters yesterday.
PROGRESS IMPOSSIBLE
Amorim accused the wealthy industrialised nations of sacrificing the interests of 70 per cent of the developing world - farmers barely getting by - for the sake of a tiny segment of their own populations.
EU trade chief Peter Mandelson, however, bluntly said that progress was "not possible" in Hong Kong unless poorer nations themselves offered to lower their trade barriers to foreign manufactured goods and services.
"There's simply too little on the table to negotiate about in Hong Kong," Mandelson told reporters yesterday morning, reiterating that the EU would not move beyond the average 46 per cent cut in farm tariffs it offered in October until other countries make counter-offers.
Eager to show some sort of progress, the EU and other wealthy nations urged the WTO to approve a proposed package of trade measures for helping 32 of the WTO's poorest members.
The plan calls for extending tariff-free and quota-free access to these so-called least developed nations, many of them in Africa, which have per capital national income of less than US$750.
