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US sees trade talks moving but poor want more

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 October 2005, 10:30 CDT

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."

Source: REUTERS

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