Trade envoys squabbling over biotech, e-commerce at WTO

GENEVA, NOV 6: Envoys to the World Trade Organisation WTO locked horns over bio-technology and electronic commerce on Saturday, throwin...

GENEVA, NOV 6: Envoys to the World Trade Organisation WTO locked horns over bio-technology and electronic commerce on Saturday, throwing fresh doubt on prospects for the launch of a new global trade round next year.

Ambassadors to the 134-member body, meeting just three weeks before most are due to head for a key WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle, made little headway in removing differences over the two issues which had been seen as less contentious.

The squabbling came despite a warning from WTO Director-General Mike Moore that unless they and their governments showed willingness to compromise soon the expected new trade liberalisation effort, the Millennium Round, could be derailed.

Trade sources said a Canadian proposal to have ministers in Seattle, where they are meeting from November 30 to December 3, agree to set up a WTO working party on biotech issues met stiff resistance from a wide range of countries. Although supported by the United States and some farm produce exporting states in LatinAmerica as well as New Zealand, the proposal was rejected by many developing countries like India and Egypt as well as Norway and Switzerland.

The European Union, whose stance on the treatment of the wider agricultural issue in a new round is at the centre of one of the major roadblocks on the road to Seattle, refused to commit itself.

Some diplomats said this was because of differences within the 15-nation grouping which had yet to be resolved. Japan, which with South Korea and the two non-EU European dissenters on biotech is allied with Brussels on the overall treatment of farming and farm products in the next round, favoured a discussion group to decide whether the issue needed full study in the WTO.

The envoys have been struggling for three months to try to agree on the text of a declaration to be issued by the ministers at the end of the Seattle meeting.

Story continues below this ad

The declaration would set out the scope of the next round of trade liberalisation discussions, following up the success of the 1986-93 UruguayRound in lowering tariffs on industrial goods and barriers to trade in services and other industries.

But so far their efforts have only succeeded in expanding an original 12-page draft into a text of 32 pages, almost entirely in square brackets because none of it has been agreed, reflecting the widely varying views of WTO members.

In a letter on Thursday to WTO General Council chairman Ali Mchumo of Tanzania, Moore gave the clearest sign yet of his fears that hopes supporters of ever-freer world trade had of a major new round could be aborted. Many envoys had assumed that the discussions on E-commerce would be simple and end in agreement on extending a two-year moratorium on any efforts to impose tariffs on it.