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Time running out as WTO bickers over subsidies, aid

By Richard Waddington and Susan Fenton
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Ministers made a last-ditch effort to rescue a global trade pact on Saturday, working around the clock to break deadlocks on ending farm export subsidies and boosting the exports of impoverished nations.
Diplomats said a failure to resolve the sticking points before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks end on Sunday would reduce the chances of a deal next year freeing up global business in farm and industrial goods and services.
"Either everything will unravel and we will have another Cancun situation -- I hope it won't happen -- or we'll have lowered ambitions in the meeting in Hong Kong," Kenyan Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi told Reuters in an interview.
Kituyi, who has mediated on agricultural issues at the talks in Hong Kong since they got under way on Monday, was referring to the acrimonious collapse of negotiations on the so-called Doha trade round at a WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, two years ago.
The United States put a brave face on the floundering talks.
"As we approach the final 24 hours of the negotiations we have a very large opportunity to put together an outcome that would be extremely positive for development ... it is just beyond our fingertips," said Deputy Trade Representative Peter Allgeier.
But a draft of the 149-nation organisation's final declaration, released after negotiators worked through the night in a private "green room", showed that there was still no agreement on setting a date for ending farm export subsidies.
The European Union has balked at fixing a date because, it says, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand must agree to reforms of their farm export systems first.
The draft suggested a date of 2010 for the elimination of the subsidies or within a period of five years but both suggestions were inside brackets, meaning neither may be adopted in the end.
"It's a sad day when we're getting excited about an end-date in brackets," said Bob Stallman, head of the United States' biggest farm group, the American Farm Bureau Federation.
One diplomat said representatives of EU member states were told by negotiators from the bloc's executive Commission that they might have to agree later on Saturday to a subsidies cut-off date or risk being blamed for a collapse of the WTO round.
"A DISGRACE"
The draft declaration also showed that there had been no headway made on a plan to give duty-free and quota-free access to exports for the world's least-developed countries (LDCs).
The United States has reservations about this initiative because it wants to exclude some goods, including textiles from Bangladesh and Cambodia.
"If nothing is agreed on the LDC package it will give a very wrong message that the negotiators have been so self-centred that they have forgotten the weakest part of the international community," Anwarul Chowdhury, U.N. Under-Secretary-General High Representative for LDCs, told a news conference.
Relief agencies were more blunt.
ActionAid branded the draft text "a disgrace and an insult to poor people all over the world", and Greenpeace said it was "a long way from equity and sustainability".
Supporters of the Doha trade deal say it could inject zest into the global economy and lift millions out of poverty, but detractors say it will only bring more profits for rich nations and their companies at the expense of the developing world.
The WTO needs a blueprint for concluding the Doha round within the first few months of 2006 if it is to have any hope of finalising a treaty by the end of the year.
A final accord must be wrapped up before the end of 2006, or early in 2007, because after that U.S. President George W. Bush may lose his Congressional authority to negotiate trade deals.
The WTO had originally hoped Hong Kong would bring a blueprint for the pact. But the bar was lowered weeks ago because of the EU's refusal to offer deeper tariffs cuts for agricultural imports without market access concessions for industrial goods and services from developing countries.
"Agriculture remains the key and market access remains the key to agriculture itself," the United States' Allgeier said.
On Hong Kong's streets, about 2,000 protesters marched against free trade.
As they arrived at fortified police lines, a short distance from the WTO's convention centre where the trade meeting is being held, they handed over pink and yellow roses to officers and released yellow balloons with the words "No No WTO" into the air.
But as more demonstrators began arriving, they quickly began pressing against the front ranks of the riot police and were pushed back by police using pepper spray and batons.
Additional reporting by William Schomberg, Doug Palmer, Sophie Walker, Ee Lyn Tan, John Ruwitch and Dominic Lau)

Source: Reuters