The Hindu : `Where developing countries put their foot down'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Sep 21, 2003

National

National

`Where developing countries put their foot down'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 20. Asserting that the WTO Ministerial meet was not entirely a disappointment and that it yielded some positive results, the Commerce Minister, Arun Jaitley, today attributed the failure to evolve a consensus to the fact that it did not address the concerns of the developing countries.

Looking back at what happened in Cancun and sharing his perceptions, Mr. Jaitley who led the Indian delegation, told newsmen that the developed countries failed to judge the mood of the developing countries while pushing the unacceptable draft.

He appreciated the collective efforts of the two coalitions of the developing countries in resisting the unreasonable postures of the developed countries and said this received wide support and acceptability both in the Western media and from NGOs.

In the context of the failure to evolve a consensus on various issues, particularly on the four Singapore issues, Mr. Jaitley said India would have preferred a declaration addressing its concerns but this did not happen. The meet concluded with the recognition of the fact that more work was needed in some key areas to enable the WTO to proceed towards the conclusion of negotiations under the Doha mandate and that the threads could be picked up from where these had been left, he said.

The Chairman of the General Council of the WTO was to convene a council meeting not later than December 15 to enable the successful and timely conclusion of negotiations.

Highlighting the positive aspects, Mr. Jaitley said the two coalitions of developing countries not only actively engaged others in negotiations but brought the concerns of the developing countries to the centre-stage of trade talks on agriculture and the Singapore issues.

The developed countries in future would find it difficult to ignore these concerns if the Doha Work Programme had to make any meaningful progress.

Mr. Jaitley said that some of the Singapore issues should be removed from the WTO agenda as suggested by the European Commission.

The developed countries apparently were not prepared to remove the distortions in the form of the huge domestic subsidies to farmers in their countries, which militated against the interest of developing countries if trade in agriculture products was to be liberalised.

In reply to a question, Mr. Jaitley said that a kneejerk reaction in the form of a review of QRs was not warranted.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National