The third ministerial meeting of theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) will take place 30 November to 3 December in Seattle,Washington, United States, and will open the negotiations known as the "MillenniumRound". Governments of developing countries form the majority of WTO members andthose of Latin America and the Caribbean in particular will dedicate their efforts toturning these negotiations into a genuine "Development Round", which clearlyresponds to their interests and defines a positive agenda for stimulating development, tocorrect the imbalances of the past.

In effect, five years after thecompletion of the so-called Uruguay Round, which gave birth to current trade agreementsand the World Trade Organization itself, the governments of developing countries areconvinced that the distribution of costs and benefits under the Uruguay Round wasunbalanced, given that most of the benefits went to industrialized countries. Greateropenness on the part of the latter affected sectors in which developing countries havelittle productive and export capacity, whereas for those sectors where developingcountries already had or could quickly have developed exportable supply, protectionismremained high and, in the case of agriculture, included mechanisms that allowedindustrialized countries to maintain high levels of subsidies. Similarly, commitments maderegarding agriculture, textile and clothing sectors ensured that more advanced economieshad plenty of time to restructure internally, more than that available to developingcounties to introduce the legislative, regulatory and institutional changes necessary tomeet their own obligations.

In contrast, as a result of theUruguay Round, developing countries assumed commitments as never before in history, notonly in traditional trade areas, including severe restrictions on the use of exportsubsidies, but also in many other areas not previously covered by trade agreements;intellectual property rights, trade-related investment measures, service trade, leading,in the case of the latter, to specific follow-up agreements covering financial servicesand telecommunications. For these countries, the greatest benefit was the creation of astronger multilateral organization, including a decision-making process based onconsensus, unique to organizations of this type, along with a mechanism for resolvingagreement-related differences that has been used much more actively than in the past. Allthis is essential to securing market access, although it clearly does not preventprotectionist use of mechanisms covered by the agreements themselves, among themanti-dumping regulations and farm production subsidies.

The concept behind the"Development Round" has been proposed, therefore, as a mechanism to correctthese imbalances. This would involve speeding up liberalization and extending it toproducts that are more significant from the perspective of developing countries, providinglonger grace periods for meeting commitments and eventually relaxing some of the severelimitations established during the previous round of negotiations, especially thosehampering domestic governments' ability to negotiate with multinational companies.

The recent crisis demonstrated theexternal vulnerability of most of the region's countries, both in financial andproductive terms. It also made the importance of expanding and diversifying exports veryobvious. All this goes to show how vital this current Round could prove to be,particularly if combined with improvements to market access or integration agreements, aspart of policies to stimulate more openness within the region. This also suggests that thecountries of Latin America and the Caribbean should keep up the rhythm of othernegotiations, be these sub-regional, hemispheric, or interregional, and, above all, shouldprogress toward ever greater regional integration in broader blocs.

Finally, we must not forget that thecurrent round will also take place in an atmosphere hostile to trade liberalization inboth developing and industrialized countries, the result of social tensions that haveaccompanied globalization. Organized civil society has emphasized the need to correctthese negative social trends. Independently of the virtues and deficiencies of thediagnoses used to justify the different points of view, this social mobilization clearlyindicates the need to define a social agenda within globalization, something which to datehas not progressed much beyond declarations of good intentions.