ARTICLE 1

WTO in DOHA

After the debacle of Seattle two years ago, the world's trade ministers are meeting in Doha in another attempt to decide on new trade agreements. Mark Tran looks at the issues.

Friday November 9, 2001

Why is this meeting so important?
The talks in the Gulf state of Qatar have taken on even more urgency since the September 11 attacks on the US. The world economy was already slowing, but the atrocities have almost certainly tipped the US, the world's economic locomotive, into recession. The World Trade Organisation, which has organised the talks, argues that more trade is vital to restore confidence.
What is the WTO?
It is the successor organisation to the general agreement on tariffs and trade, which was formed after the second world war. The WTO has greater authority than GATT to resolve trade disputes, but has to operate on consensus, which means that any of the 142 member countries can block agreement. Expect a lot of horse-trading and arm-twisting during the five-day meeting.

Will Doha be any more successful than Seattle?
The negotiations in riot-ridden Seattle collapsed when developing countries walked out after accusing the industrialised countries of failing to open their markets to clothing and food - the most important exports from poor countries. That issue still has to be resolved.

Do the developing countries have a case?
The World Bank thinks so. A recent study faulted wealthy countries for refusing to drop barriers to developing country exports. According to the Bank, rich countries spend $1bn (£685m) a day on agricultural subsidies - more than six times the amount they provide in development aid. The US excludes high quality lemons from debt-stricken Argentina to protect farmers in California and Florida. North Africa has problems selling tomatoes and citrus products to the EU because it wants to shelter its farmers.

Will the US and the EU be more forthcoming this time?
They have said that the new round will focus on the interests of the world's poorest countries, but India and other poorer countries condemned a draft declaration as containing little of interest to them. Developing countries refused to endorse the draft at the WTO's general council meeting in Geneva just before Doha.

What do the industrialised countries want?
Different groups want different things. The EU favours a broad trade round that includes global investment and competition rules so it can tell its farming lobbies that it has won concessions in return for cuts in massive agricultural subsidies.

What is the US looking for?
The big prize for the US - and the EU for that matter - is the liberalisation of trade in services. This could allow private sector companies unfettered access to public services in transport and utilities. US insurance groups and healthcare companies have been lobbying hard to open up education and health as well. The EU may be prepared to reduce agricultural subsidies if what's known as the general agreement on trade in services treaty (Gats) gets approved.

What are the other potential deal breakers?
The most contentious issue is access to life-saving drugs. Drugs are protected by 20-year patents under the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights treaty, or Trips. Developing countries want a clear statement that patents can be overridden in the interests of public health - the Aids crisis in South Africa being a case in point.

Who opposes a watering down of Trips?
The US, the UK and Germany because of their strong pharmaceutical lobbies. But the US may have weakened its hand when it threatened to break the patent on the main anti-anthrax drug, Cipro, made by the German drug giant, Bayer, in order to force the price down.

Have anti-globalisation protesters turned up in Doha?
Very few. Demonstrators have been largely kept out of Qatar because of strict visa regulations. But anti-WTO events in cities throughout the world are planned during the conference.

Is China about to become a new WTO member?
The WTO plans to approve the membership of China and Taiwan. China spent more than 15 years negotiating its terms of membership. Its arrival in the WTO means it will have to abide by international rules for conducting trade, but it will benefit from receiving the same trading terms as other members.


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ARTICLE 2

A gulf waiting to be bridged

If Doha trade talks fail the developing nations, Ajmir Khan's descendants will still have to fish for jobs abroad

Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent
Friday November 9, 2001
The Guardian

The Gulf state of Qatar must have seemed like an ideal location when the World Trade Organisation chose it a year ago to host this week's crucial gathering of trade ministers. At the time, the main security concern on the minds of WTO officials was the threat of a repeat of the big anti-globalisation protests which disrupted its last meeting in Seattle two years ago.
Qatar promised an unprecedented security crackdown for the summit, including closing its borders to all but officially approved visitors in the run-up to the meeting. Demonstrations are rare in the prosperous but tiny country, though its ruler, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, is relatively liberal by the standards of the region - he funds but does not control al-Jazeera television, the only truly independent source of news from the Muslim world.

As trade ministers gather in the capital, Doha, today, Qatar's location in the sensitive Gulf region is no longer an advantage. Large parts of the Islamic world are in uproar over the American bombing campaign against Afghan targets, and Osama bin Laden has issued a warning to all westerners to get out of the Arabian peninsula.

Several delegations have been issued with gas masks and emergency medical kits, while US trade officials will be carrying radios in case they need to be evacuated to the fleet standing by offshore.

The fact that all of the WTO's 142 members have decided to go to Qatar despite the risks is an indication of the importance they attach to a new round of global tariff cutting. With the world economy cooling rapidly, the US and the EU stress that failure in Doha would be a catastrophic blow to confidence. The World Bank warned last week that trade is stagnating.

A repeat of the Seattle conference - which collapsed after members from developing countries members walked out in disgust as police battled protesters in the streets outside - would be a disastrous blow for the WTO itself whose credibility as the main forum for trade negotiations is on the line at Doha.

Robert Zoellick, the US trade negotiator told his counterparts two months ago at a pre-Doha meeting in Mexico that if they fail to agree to start a new round in Qatar, America will devote its energies to regional and bilateral trade arrangements rather than WTO-brokered agreements.

Nightmare


Even the non-governmental organisations who have been among the WTO's harshest critics would rather have it refereeing a fairer world trade system than watching helplessly from the sidelines as powerful traders cut one-sided agreements with the world's poorest countries. One NGO expert confesses that his worst nightmare is that the WTO will become "just another irrelevant Geneva organisation".

The WTO's director-general, former trade union official and New Zealand prime minister Mike Moore, insisted last night that the organisation had learned from the mistakes of Seattle. Poor organisation by the host country and insufficient preparation ahead of the meeting left trade ministers no chance of settling the thorny issues dividing them in the four days of the meeting.

While nearly all members - with the notable exception of India - pay lip service to the goal of beginning negotiations, opinions diverge wildly over what should be on the table for the 9th round of global trade talks since the war. Trade negotiators have spent thousands of hours in Geneva preparing for this week's meeting, but the basic divisions between the main trading blocks are eerily similar to the deadlock ahead of Seattle.

Europe favours a broad trade round including a host of new issues such as global investment and competition rules, so it can tell its disgruntled farming lobbies that it has won maximum concessions from its trading partners in return for making some cuts to its bloated agricultural subsidy regime.

The vast majority of developing countries are vehemently opposed to talking about new issues, arguing that they are still trying to fulfill the undertakings agreed at the Uruguay round of trade talks which ended in 1994. Moreover, they are outraged that so little has materialised from western promises made during the round to open markets to clothing and food from the developing world - their most important exports.

Meanwhile the US - while prepared to humour the EU's desire for global investment rules if it helps to get Europe to cut its agricultural subsidies - does not favour standardising competition regimes and would rather get agreement on a narrower agenda than see a wide-ranging deal fail.

The US is also under fire from developing countries for its stance on the sensitive issue of drug patents, protected by a WTO agreement on intellectual property rights. Developing countries want a clear statement in the agreement that patents can be overriden in the interests of public health and are indignant that the US still opposes their demands even though it recently threatened to break the patent on the main anti-anthrax drug in order to force the price down.

Some omens are looking more promising than they were ahead of Seattle. A good negotiating relationship between the EU and the US is usually the key to a successful round, and Pascal Lamy, the EU's top trade representative gets on well with Mr Zoellick.

Moreover, unlike the Seattle draft which was more than 30 pages long and full of alternative wordings for the contentious issues, the Doha declaration contains a series of clever compromises covering up the deep divisions which remain between the trading blocs. As David Woods, a seasoned WTO watcher, warned earlier this month, if ministers gloss over their differences in their determination to get a new round launched, they risk enshrining conflicts which could doom the talks at a later stage.

The attitude of developing countries could be of most significance in Doha. They are determined not to be sidelined in a new round of talks and have thrown a spanner in the works by condemning the chairman's draft declaration as containing little of interest for developing countries and refusing to endorse it at the WTO's general council meeting in Geneva last week.

Buzz word


The EU and the US "should not take developing countries' willingness to come to Doha as a sign they are prepared to be pushed around," says Mark Malloch Brown, the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme.

Development will be the buzz word in Doha. As a counter to the arguments of the anti-globalisation movement, the EU and the US have declared that the new round will focus on the interests of the world's poorest countries. To many in the developing world this smacks of hypocrisy - a true "development" round would concentrate on opening up agricultural and textile markets in the west, not on a host of complicated issues only loosely related to trade and of no interest to developing countries.

With so much at stake, some deal is almost certain to be agreed in Doha. Whether they can bring it to a successful conclusion remains to be seen. Like the war against terrorism, a new round of global trade talks could run and run.

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ARTICLE

Don't suppress trade, warns WTO chief

Staff and agencies
Friday November 9, 2001

Governments should resist the temptation to retreat behind import barriers in favour of more trade to counter the global slowdown, the head of the World Trade Organisation said today.
Hours before trade ministers started a crucial five-day meeting in Doha, Qatar, Mike Moore stressed the importance of launching a new round of trade liberalisation talks, saying it would benefit everybody.

"Trade enhances consumer choice, raises national incomes and gives signals for an appropriate allocation of resources, thus promoting employment, development and growth," the WTO director general said in his annual report.

The 101-page annual report follows on from the WTO's statistical report, released at the end of October, which said the volume of growth in trade this year would barely reach 2%, compared with 12% in 2000.

Many governments hope a successful launch in Doha - unlike the calamitous meeting in Seattle two years ago - will give a boost to investor confidence and put the global economy on the road to recovery.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the US, governments also see Doha as an example of international cooperation and a fitting riposte to Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the atrocities.

But many poor nations are in truculent mood amid concern that they will be forced to open up their markets while rich countries fail to reciprocate. Developing countries claim their sacrifices were greater after the Uruguay Round - the last trade talks, which finished in 1994 - and are unwilling to start a new round unless they are sure to benefit.

Anti-globalisation protesters also resist a new trade round as they argue that WTO rules benefit rich countries and big business at the expense of poor workers, while damaging the environment.

Demonstrators, who have been mostly unable to get to Qatar because of strict visa regulations, are planning protests and anti-WTO events in cities across the globe during the conference.

India saw the biggest demonstration as thousands marched through the centre of New Delhi in protest against the WTO meeting and US air strikes on Afghanistan in a demonstration organised by India's ultra-left Communist party.

"Down with World Trade Organisation. Indian government - leave the WTO," the protesters shouted.

In Thailand, about 1,000 protesters, mostly farmers, marched from Bangkok's World Trade Centre shopping mall to the US embassy.

Demonstrators blocked part of an eight-lane road in central Bangkok and shouted anti-globalisation and anti-American slogans on various issues - from expensive patented Aids drugs to farm subsidy schemes.

The protest was highlighted by a traditional Thai "cursing ceremony" directed at the US government with protesters burned burning chillies in a frying pan, filling the air with eye-stinging smoke.

Apart from talks on a new trade round, the WTO plans to approve the membership of China tomorrow and, on Sunday, its neighbour Taiwan.

China spent more than 15 years negotiating its terms of membership. Its arrival in the WTO means it will have to abide by international rules for conducting trade, but it will benefit from receiving the same trading terms as other members.