The Hindu : India's interests sacrificed at Cancun: Swamy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 16, 2003

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India's interests sacrificed at Cancun: Swamy

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 15. The Janata Party president, Subramanian Swamy, today charged the NDA Government with having sacrificed the national interests at the Cancun Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation.

"This Government has sacrificed the national interests to further the interests of China and Brazil, especially in the field of agriculture," he claimed.

According to Dr. Swamy, India had badly erred in not aligning with the United States and the European Union. "China very cleverly put India in the forefront, we should have collaborated with the U.S. and the E.U. This would have helped us get market access for our farmers and export subsidies worth more than Rs. 50,000 crores," he said. He also pointed out that it was not in India's interest to side with China, because while India had the lowest agricultural cost in the world, in China it was very high.

Dr. Swamy said the draft prepared by the U.S. and the E.U. had provisions for allowing market access. If the export market had opened up, the Indian farmer would have had unfettered access and would have been able to sell directly in the export market. "The Bharatiya Janata Party is a party of traders. If the farmers had been allowed to sell directly, it would have hurt the traders and that is why the Government took the stand that it did at Cancun," Dr. Swamy alleged.

He also criticised the Congress for supporting the Government on this issue. "The Congress still suffers from the cold war mentality, that whatever America does is wrong."

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