WTO talks in danger zone as Hong Kong may not be enough

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said he was still pressing for a wide-ranging agreement when all the WTO’s 148 members meet in Hong Kong between December 13 and 18.

“The moment you start reducing expectations, you risk introducing complacency,” Mandelson said, heading for the Geneva meeting which is due to stretch into Wednesday. “My view is that we should keep up the pressure to narrow the differences.”

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has said he wants Hong Kong to take the round two-thirds of the way towards conclusion, with all the major bargaining and trade-offs done.

But late on Monday, Nath said it might now only get half way in December. He said it was too early to say whether a new WTO meeting was needed early in 2006.

After four years of talks, the gap between rich and poor nations, chiefly over agriculture, remains wide. All sides have warned the negotiations risk collapse if the deadlock remains.

Some ministers and senior trade officials say the time has come to lower the target for Hong Kong to avoid a damaging failure like the conference in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003.

But they add that any delay could not lead to a weakening of the overall goals of the round — slashing of rich nation farm subsidies and market-opening across the global economy — or for a postponement of the round’s final end-2006 deadline.

“I think that we may have to be content with a little less,” Amorim said about Hong Kong. “But if that happens, it does not mean lowering the ambition of the round.”

The EU has so far borne most of the criticism from other major trading nations for the impasse in the negotiations. The US, Australia and Brazil say Brussels must go further to open up Europe’s protected farm market. The European Commission has revised its agricultural offer last month and says it now wants progress in industrial goods and services.

Four years, however no breakthrough in sight

Top executives from dozens of leading companies including France’s Vivendi Universal, US software giant Microsoft, Finland’s Nokia and Indian firms like Kanoria Chemicals, TIL Ltd and JK Group have urged ministers to “redouble their efforts to break out of the current impasse” in a joint letter in the Financial Times.

The trade talks need to end before the US president’s “fast-track” authority to negotiate trade deals expires in 2007.

Mandelson said Tuesday’s meeting had “a stronger platform” after Monday’s talks extended beyond agriculture into industrial goods and services. But Amorim, who said he was unhappy at the lack of movement on agriculture on Monday, said the EU was demanding too much in other areas and that he suspected it was a tactical move to prevent Brussels from having to concede more on farm goods. — Reuters