Kamal Nath walks out of Geneva meet

India and the developing members’ groups such as G-33 and G-20 have been pushing for a reduction in trade-distorting agricultural subsidies as a pre-condition for market access.

Seeing no resolution in sight for the sticky issue of agriculture at the meetings and little room for the developing countries to negotiate with, Nath said his staying on would make no difference.

Nath had hogged the limelight at the Hong Kong meeting in December 2005 and come back touting the HK declaration as a victory. But in Geneva, the subtle but substantial changes made in the current draft modalities in the months since Hong Kong tested his tolerance. Provisions that were to allow developing countries to protect their interests in special products and guard against import surges have now been tweaked so as to liberalize their markets further.

Nath, who had already threatened to book a flight home during Friday’s meetings, may have taken an easy political decision, speaking almost in sync with a CPM statement issued before the meeting began.

But the talks are expected to continue and India’s absence will not lead to a change of heart in the stodgy developed nations.

Ministers blamed each other for the failure of the meetings while EU and the US blamed each other for not doing enough on agricultural subsidies. Within the EU itself, France was being blamed for its rigidness on subsidies.

Nath and the developing countries had an unusual ally in their demand for lower agricultural subsidies — World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz and IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato had warned WTO Director General Pascal Lamy about the looming crisis in the talks.

Wolfowitz said that the US should offer some “real movement” on its subsidies regime to rescue the talks from a collapse.

By real movement, he means “not just reducing the ceiling” — the ceiling on subsidies is higher than actual spending on farm subsidies in the US. “It needs to come down to where it actually starts to bite,” he pointed out.