[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Geneva Talks Move Toward Farm Pact

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Geneva Talks Move Toward Farm Pact

July 30, 2004
 By ELIZABETH BECKER 



 

GENEVA, July 29 - Working into the early hours of Thursday,
five crucial players, including the United States and the
European Union, reached an informal agreement on
agriculture that has put global trade talks back on track,
although behind schedule. 

Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director general of the World
Trade Organization, released a statement Thursday afternoon
saying he welcomed the incipient agreement on agriculture,
which he said gives momentum to the talks. 

With less than two days remaining, delegates and officials
said that the United States in particular had made
significant compromises on Wednesday night, inspiring
optimism that the talks would lead to an agreement and
advance the Doha round of trade for the developing nations.


"I think it looks good,'' said Arancha González,
spokeswoman for Pascal Lamy, the top trade official for the
European Union. 

While officials were reluctant to disclose specifics on the
discussions or even describe them as an agreement, they did
say that the United States seemed willing to put off some
of its more contentious demands on agricultural subsidies
and, instead, offer to make cuts in other areas. 

The United States had been the focus of attacks on
Wednesday by some poor countries for failing to make
specific compromises in agriculture. Agriculture has been
so crucial to this round of talks that the World Bank has
said that an agreement could add $3 trillion in benefits to
the global market place. 

Attempts to reach an agreement last year in Cancún, Mexico,
ended in failure. Rich countries were accused of catering
to their largest commercial farmers who receive $300
billion in subsidies and supports every year to the
detriment of farmers in poor countries who cannot compete
against the subsidized commodities. 

However, in talks Wednesday through the early Thursday, the
European Union's offer of eliminating its export subsidies
was matched by an American proposal that was described as a
cut in trade-distorting domestic subsidies in the first
year of a new trade accord, according to officials close to
the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 

If that holds, the likelihood of an agreement improves,
particularly because it could satisfy the poor West African
nations that have been demanding that the United States end
its cotton subsidy. 

Richard Mills, the spokesman for Robert B. Zoellick, the
United States trade representative, refused to comment on
details of the talks, but said they were very useful. 

"We're being realistic,'' he said after the talks that
lasted until nearly 2 a.m. Thursday. "We're not
pessimistic, and we're not optimistic." 

Australia, Brazil and India were the other three countries
meeting with the United States and the European Union in a
group known as the Five Interested Parties. Together they
are the crucial factions that must agree if the entire
147-member party is to reach an accord this week. 

Now top officials at the World Trade Organization must
assemble the compromises suggested by this group, and a
handful of other blocs representing the richest and the
poorest farmers of the world, and publish a text of an
accord. Officials were expecting that text by midnight on
Thursday. 

With an agreement on agriculture close, new questions were
raised about efforts to lower trade barriers to industrial
goods, especially in the poorer, developing countries.
Wealthy countries argued that since they were overhauling
their agricultural programs, the developing world should
further open their markets to industrial goods. 

But African delegates said that further negotiations were
necessary to make this an equal trade-off. 

While most delegates met behind closed doors, several
African officials held a news briefing on Wednesday
singling out the United States as a barrier to a trade
accord because of its cotton subsidies. 

"Thousands and thousands of small farmers are being
destroyed, their families going hungry because of the
unfair subsidies of American cotton," said Ousmane Ngom,
Senegal's minister of trade, who represents one of the four
African nations that have pressed for emergency relief from
what they call unfair trading practices on cotton. 

For its part, the United States has offered some
development assistance from its existing aid programs. But
it has been reluctant to single out cotton for deeper
subsidy cuts than other basic commodity programs, which
include corn, wheat, soybeans and rice, to avoid an
unsettling precedent. 

The African ministers agreed to put cotton back into
overall agriculture talks, but called the news conference
to warn they had reached their bottom line and were waiting
for a response from Mr. Zoellick and the American
delegation. 

Then later Wednesday night, at least 27 countries
registered their complaints that the group negotiating
behind closed doors was being accorded too great a role in
the talks. China, Malaysia, Chile and Japan were among the
countries voicing concerns. 

China and Chile are powerful members of the Group of 20
developing nations that was formed in Cancún last year to
push the wealthy nations to cut their agricultural
supports. 

Japan, which puts a 490 percent tariff on rice, is an
outspoken member of the Group of 10 wealthy countries that
includes Norway and Switzerland. They have joined with the
European Union in asking for continued protections on what
they call sensitive products, a proposition that has been
criticized by developing nations. 

Mr. Lamy was under pressure, as well, with European
ministers gathering in Geneva to meet and assess whatever
new draft text is produced. Led by President Jacques Chirac
of France, several European countries including Hungary,
Italy and Poland - allies of the United States in Iraq -
were concerned that Europe had made greater concessions
than the United States on agriculture and that their
farmers would suffer as a result. 

But Mr. Zoellick has promised that the United States would
be a leader in this round of talks and has traveled around
the world to wring out a compromise, however vague, on
agriculture. 

"Although we won't unilaterally disarm,'' Mr. Mills, the
American spokesman, said, "we are committed to global
reform in the W.T.O. and the United States has stated its
willingness to cut subsidies and tariffs if others will.'' 

Phil Bloomer, the director of Oxfam International's Make
Trade Fair Campaign that has focused on European and
American farm subsidies, said that the United States had to
make a serious concession immediately. 

"The European Union has said it will eliminate export
subsidies and give an end date," Mr. Bloomer said. "The
West African nations made the concession of putting cotton
inside agricultural talks. Now its up to the United States
to make a similar concession.'' 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/business/worldbusiness/30trade.html?ex=1092208765&ei=1&en=941bb27c6cbfe355


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