WTO farm talks near deadlock Charlotte Denny Saturday March 29, 2003 The Guardian
The World Trade Organisation was last night facing the prospect of a repeat of its disastrous Seattle meeting, after talks on agreeing a framework for cutting farm subsidies ended in deadlock. Stuart Harbinson, who chairs the farm talks, admitted yesterday that he had abandoned the end of March deadline for drafting the agreement after failing to close the divisions between the main trading powers. "The situation we are now in is very serious," Mr Harbinson told a meeting of envoys to the 145-member trade body. He had drafted an ambitious plan which would have phased out export subsidies over the next 10 years and cut tariffs steeply, but met fierce opposition from Japan and the European Union. US chief negotiator Allen Johnson this week claimed the problems were caused by "the European Union's inability to engage and Japan's unwillingness to engage". Some trade analysts have accused Mr Harbinson of letting the US off the hook by ignoring the lavish subsidies it gives its own farmers. Monday's deadline is the third that negotiators at the WTO's Geneva headquarters have missed since talks began 14 months ago. Analysts fear that the September meeting of trade ministers in Cancun, Mexico, could turn into a repeat of the WTO's meeting in Seattle three years ago, when negotiations collapsed amid bitter recriminations as protesters battled police in the streets outside. Supachai Panitchpakdi, the WTO's director general, warned last month that agriculture was one of two critical issues which had to be agreed before September to prevent the Cancun meeting degenerating into a stalemate. Agriculture is seen as a test of the west's claims that the new round of global trade talks will cut world poverty. Aid agencies said rich countries had failed to deliver on the promises they made at the launch of the talks in Doha. "It sets the scene for a very rancorous meeting in Cancun," said Duncan Green, a policy analyst at Catholic aid agency Cafod. "These deadlines were supposed to be about building confidence for developing countries in the round, and it has in fact achieved the opposite. Developing countries are feeling let down and angry."
