US sees trade talks moving, poor want more

By Richard Waddington

GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. trade chief Robert Portman said on
Tuesday he saw “real movement” in struggling four-year global
trade talks but key developing countries signaled they wanted
big powers to do more on cutting farm subsidies.

The contrasting views were set out on the second of three
days of meetings in Switzerland to inject new life into the
talks, the Doha Round, which aim to create a new global pact to
open world markets and lift millions out of poverty.

Portman was speaking to reporters in Geneva a day after the
United States and the European Union presented new proposals on
the key problem of cutting farm tariffs and reducing
agricultural subsidies in rich countries.

“For the first time, I see real movement toward having a
successful meeting in Hong Kong,” he said, referring to a
ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in
December at which vital decisions have to be made.

Diplomats said the empty rhetoric had finally given way to
real discussion about the numbers that would have to go into
any pact.

But soon after Portman spoke, Brazil’s Foreign Minister
Celso Amorim said the G20 group he chairs believed the U.S.
plan was “insufficient because it does not lead to real cuts in
(U.S.) budgetary expenditures (on subsidies).”

Kamal Nath, trade minister of leading G20 member India,
speaking with Amorim at a news conference after the group met
to consider the U.S. and EU blueprints, voiced a similar view.

“I would welcome this step (the U.S. plan) but what we need
is a leap that removes the great structural imbalances in
agriculture,” he said.

Another sign of trouble came from Brussels where the
European Union’s largest farm organization, COPA, dismissed the
U.S. proposals as aimed at protecting its own interests — a
stance that could boost internal EU doubts on cutting
subsidies.

The reactions showed there would be no quick breakthroughs,
although Portman warned on Tuesday that action was vital now,
preferably this week, to rescue the WTO’s Doha Round
negotiations.

“We really don’t have time to play games. We need to make
real progress. If others don’t come along, then the Doha Round
is in danger,” he declared, echoing similar comments earlier
from EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.

Both Washington and Brussels said their plans should bring
a breakthrough in time for Hong Kong to set the Round on course
for completion at the end of 2006.

After the G20 deliberations, the intense diplomacy
continued with a meeting involving Portman, Mandelson and their
counterparts from Brazil, India and Australia.

The five trading powers form an inner group which embraces
a wide range of interests and has been instrumental in breaking
deadlocks in the past.

The 148-state WTO needs to agree a blueprint for the final
stage of the Round in Hong Kong, but negotiations are snagged
on a host of issues, of which agriculture is the most pressing.

Aid agency Oxfam, often close to poor country thinking,
dismissed the ideas for cutting subsidies and tariffs presented
by Portman as “smoke and mirrors” aimed at getting “painful
concessions” from developing nations.

But Portman on Tuesday rejected the Oxfam analysis, saying
it was “clearly inaccurate.” He said the comments by the aid
agency, which promotes Third World causes, were effectively
“letting off the hook countries that protect their markets.”