Doha: continued uncertainty behind the outward displays of optimism

On Monday, September 3, Ambassador Crawford Falconer, chairman of the agricultural negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO), kicked off a three-week session of agricultural negotiations following a one-month summer break. Some thirty delegations will participate in the negotiations, to take place at the multilateral institution’s headquarters in Geneva. Crawford Falconer plans to convene all members on September 14, with the possibility of circulating a new version of the draft modalities in mid-October. Negotiators will attempt to reach common ground on market liberalization and the reduction of agricultural subsidies, two issues that have been at the forefront of the talks since the start of the Doha Round in November 2001. Along with increased access to industrial markets for developing countries, these issues are the “key” to this round of trade negotiations. The draft modalities for agriculture and industrial products published in mid-July did not provide the basis for a deal, as the members of the WTO deemed the proposals to lack sufficient balance. The larger developing countries in particular, among them Brazil and India, found the proposals for opening their industrial markets to be unacceptable given the counter-proposals in the agricultural sector, particularly with regard to reducing agricultural subsidies in the United States.

Crawford Falconer is also expected to lend particular consideration to the “small” developing countries, which are holding out for more action on issues such as special products, the special safeguard mechanism and cotton. Among them, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad, the “Cotton Four” group of Africa’s leading cotton producers and also the countries behind the “Sectoral Initiative in Favour of Cotton”, gathered in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on September 6 “to discuss and decide on a negotiating strategy" in view of obtaining the full package they have been advocating since May 2003.

At the close of the September 3 meeting, Crawford Falconer expressed satisfaction with the working atmosphere, stating that delegates were “all in a mood to roll their sleeves up and get to work.” Participants were eager to issue encouraging statements; Brazil, for example, indicated that it was willing “to make concessions.”

Meeting in Sydney on September 8-9 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the members of APEC1 , who together account for close to half of worldwide trade, committed “the political will, flexibility and ambition necessary to bring the Doha negotiations into the final stages this year,” thereby echoing the “political leap” called for by Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the WTO.

The Doha Round has thus once again reached a decisive moment, the outcome of which remains uncertain. In an interview with the BBC in London on September 4, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson stressed the influence of the United States will have on the direction of the Doha Round, stating, “I believe that the United States holds the key to unlocking it.” Others nonetheless point out that the current political climate in the United States does not bode well for a speedy resolution: the Bush administration is isolated and the draft legislation for the new five-year Farm Bill is particularly ambitious. In a statement to the press shortly before the WTO talks were to resume, Christine Lagarde, France’s Minister of Economy and Finance, expressed a view shared by some analysts: “I think the gap between the positions of some and the concessions of others is too great to allow for any hope of a rapprochement in the near future.”

Sources: AFDI, articles and dispatches from national and international press outlets.