The Hindu : We took WTO battle to Western camp: Jaitley

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Saturday, Sep 20, 2003

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We took WTO battle to Western camp: Jaitley

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 19. At Cancun, the developing countries successfully took the battle to the Western camp. Perhaps for the first time, it became clear that negotiations related to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) would no longer be one-sided with the two blocs comprising the rich countries setting the agenda. The collective position taken by the G-21 developing countries changed all that.The Union Law Minister, who also holds charge of Commerce, Arun Jaitley, who led the Indian delegation at Cancun, summed up what happened over five days of gruelling negotiations. He was addressing a press conference at Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters here today where he was welcomed and felicitated by the party president, Venkaiah Naidu, for making his country and his party proud.Mr. Jaitley said that before embarking for Cancun he had extensive discussions at home with parties across the spectrum, trade unions, farmers' organisations, non-government organisations, economists and representative organisations of industry. Surprisingly and refreshingly, the views that emerged were more or less the same. India must not sacrifice the interest of farmers who constitute 65 per cent of the population and the voice of more than 50 per cent of the population living in the developing countries must be heard.

Mr. Jaitley said that armed with this consensus at home he felt much stronger. And despite misgivings in some quarters and fears that the unity among developing countries would break down, that did not happen. "We did a successful exercise in coalition building among developing countries ahead of the Cancun meet.''At the end of the day in Cancun, the European Union was willing to "sacrifice'' the Singapore issues - investment and competition - while it was also ready to make some concessions on export subsidies on agriculture.Mr. Jaitley was critical of the draft declaration that could not be adopted. "It was a bad draft declaration ... but at the end we were close to a good declaration. However, the meeting was declared closed.'' He was hopeful that the next round in Geneva would take up the threads from where Cancun left.

But irrespective of success or failure, the historic change in Cancun was that the balance of equation between the developed and developing world had changed. The West will have to face this fact.

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