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Business Day, Johannesburg, 13 February 2006
=New bid for trade breakthrough as Blair warns of ‘critical stage’=


 * Jonathan Katzenellenbogen, International Affairs Editor**

HAMMANSKRAAL — Faced with a possible collapse of world trade talks, world leaders meeting at a game lodge outside Pretoria at the weekend said a summit of select leaders could soon be convened to overcome logjams.

Brazil had asked wealthy western nations to call a special summit to kickstart the dialogue and ensure a global agreement on trade was met before the April deadline, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said yesterday. Amorim told a news briefing after a two-day summit of centre-left government leaders that western leaders had indicated a willingness to push harder for a deal, although the specific steps remained vague.

The leaders at the summit included host President Thabo Mbeki, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Korean Prime Minister Hae-chan Lee, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “If you ask of specific progress, I’d say we are committed to remaining engaged. We’d be prepared to add the political impetus required to reach an agreement,” Amorim said.

At December’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Hong Kong, ministers set the end of April as the deadline for a draft deal on opening agricultural and industrial markets, a key part of the WTO’s so-called Doha round negotiations. Details of the overall pact need to be finalised by the end of this year if the pact is to be ratified as planned next year.

“We need a meeting we believe leaders are willing to participate in to prepare for the completion of the round,” Amorim said.

Although the leaders could not say when this summit would be held, Blair said a trade deal was in the “moral interest and self-interest” of his country and that it was urgent that progress be made.

Blair called for a new push on trade talks, saying failure to reach a deal could spell doom for the world’s poor. “It is a shared perspective that we have reached a critical stage in trade talks,” Blair said. “What is clear is that failure on the world trade round would be a devastating blow to the poorest countries in the world,” he said.

At issue is the question of access to EU agricultural markets and subsidies to EU and US farmers and the level of tariffs on industrial goods. Sources said Brazil had used the meeting to suggest an urgent summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) rich countries to discuss trade, but Blair appeared reluctant to convene such a gathering if success was not assured.

Brazil’s Lula said that his country was ready to make concessions to reach a world trade deal, but only if the developed world also stood ready to bargain. “It is of concern to ourselves that making concessions should not drive any of us over the edge,” Lula said.

“Failure of the Doha round would seriously affect the multilateral system of doing things and would undermine the reform of institutions like the United Nations... because this would mean the minority and less influential, mostly poor or developing countries, always get nothing.”

UK Trade and Industry Minister Allan Johnson said prospects for a trade deal were encouraging because no country had yet put a final offer.

The summit was preceded by a roundtable discussion on trade that was attended by EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson and WTO director-general Pascal Lamy. With Reuters


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A154058**



Business Day, Johannesburg, 13 February 2006
=Shift in terms of trade ‘favours developing countries’=


 * Siseko Njobeni and Carli Lourens**

DEVELOPING countries had gained considerable clout in the past few years and could no longer be bullied in world trade negotiations by rich countries as easily as in the past, World Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general Pascal Lamy said on Friday at the South African Institute of International Affairs. Comparing the situation when multilateral trade negotiations started in 1986 and the present was like comparing day and night, he said.

Countries such as Brazil, China, India and SA now had good technical skills, negotiators and experience, among other strengths.

By combining their forces in alliances such as the Group of 20 (G-20), these countries had become a force to be reckoned with, said Lamy.

“We must not be patronising. The G-20 has become powerful,” he said.

The last WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December had seen a subtle shift in the balance of power in world trade negotiations in favour of developing countries. For the first time, said Lamy, Doha looked like the development round it was supposed to be.

He attributed the gains, however modest, that developing countries had made at Hong Kong largely to the united front they presented.

While the US and the European Union (EU) now spent most of their time vilifying each other, the G-20 had emerged as a powerful new dynamic on the global trade negotiations scene, he said.

But it would be wrong to assume that the G-20 was a uniform group with similar interests. For instance, not all the group’s members had offensive strategies to gain market access in rich markets for their agricultural products, Lamy said.

India, a key member of the G-20, is also part of the G-33, another group of developing countries that is more defensive in its approach, seeking to protect certain “special” agricultural products.

But G-20 members had stuck together, managing to maintain pressure on developed countries. “They have learnt to negotiate. They also have trained trade negotiators,” he said.

It is anybody’s guess whether WTO members will make the end-of-year deadline. At the moment, judging from the comments of the hard-talking EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, there are still strong differences.

Speaking in Johannesburg on Friday, Mandelson said that without concessions from developing countries on industrial goods and services, WTO members risked losing even the few gains that had been made so far.

But Lamy remained optimistic.

“I think it [meeting the deadline] is still doable. But there are still key issues to be resolved. All the parties realise we have limited time to address those issues.

“The different parties know they have to move — the EU on agricultural tariffs, the US on subsidies and the G-20 on industrial tariffs,” he said.

“The window of opportunity is closing. What is on the table at the moment is not enough to make this round a success.”

Lamy has a tough job stopping the fragile cookie from crumbling. Failure of the current round of negotiations will be a big blow to all, especially the developing countries.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/economy.aspx?ID=BD4A154048**



Business Day, Johannesburg, 13 February 2006
=SA ‘must push rich nations’=


 * Carli Lourens and Siseko Njobeni**

THE European Union’s (EU’s) commissioner of trade called on SA at the weekend to use its considerable influence among developing countries to facilitate concessions in services and industrial goods in world trade talks.

In a veiled threat, commissioner Peter Mandelson (pictured) warned that developing countries should make concessions quickly or risk losing the gains made in the Doha round of negotiations to date. “We need some movement quickly or we risk losing it all,” he said at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

The EU committed at December’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting in Hong Kong to eliminate export subsidies on farm products by 2013.

It now wants developing countries to reciprocate, with Mandelson warning that the EU “will not move” until this happened.

He said liberalising trade in industrial goods would do more for development than lowering barriers to farm trade.

“SA needs to push the G-20 (Group of 20 developing nations) to open their markets…” said Mandelson. SA is a founding member of the G-20 alliance, whose objective it is to fight farm subsidies in rich markets. Other members include Brazil, China and India.

Mandelson challenged SA to set the example by making an offer on services soon, saying the EU was dismayed at SA’s failure to not do this earlier. He called for an “early post-Hong Kong services offer” by SA.

SA and other developing countries have said the EU’s offer to eliminate export subsidies by 2013 was virtually meaningless as this was already planned as part of the internal agricultural reform programme in that region.

Mandelson said the EU had made substantial offers, including an ambitious services offer. He said the EU would not be the “sole banker” in the Doha round of negotiations.

The head of the South African delegation to the WTO, Faizel Ismail, has warned that the EU’s refusal to make further concessions in the current Doha talks “sets the stage for the complex post-Hong Kong Doha negotiations”.

He said that in his assessment of the Hong Kong meeting, the EU’s stance would make it impossible for WTO members to conclude the Doha Round by the end of this year.

Mandelson’s argument that the EU had done enough in agreeing to end agricultural export subsidies by 2013 was not true “as the current EU offer on market access will result in no further real market openings or acceleration of CAP (common agricultural policy)”.

CAP — which determines EU’s agricultural policy, including subsidies — has been undergoing reforms since 2003.

Ismail said that Mandelson’s argument that “advanced” developing countries such as SA, China and Brazil should make concessions in industrial goods and services before the EU made additional concessions was an attempt to raise the bar above the heads of developing countries.

“There is legitimate suspicion that Mandelson’s argument is an attempt to shift the blame for lack of movement in the Doha negotiations to the major developing countries,” he said.

Ismail said if rich countries got the concessions they wanted from developing countries on industrial goods and services, the “development content” of the Doha round would be turned on its head.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/frontpage.aspx?ID=BD4A154057**



EU representative wants more active local involvement in WTO talks
=Get off the fence on trade, Mandelson urges SA=

Business Report, Johannesburg,** **February 13, 2006

 * By Mariam Isa**

Johannesburg - Europe's trade chief urged South Africa on Friday to play a more active role in global trade negotiations, saying that the country was a pivot between the world's more advanced and vulnerable developing economies.

EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson also urged the country to get involved in Europe's negotiations with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to facilitate trade integration in the region.

"What I want South Africa to do is to come off the fence ... and where there seem to be obstacles or conflicting demands, to help us iron those out."

Mandelson was replying to a question during a visit ahead of a summit of leaders from developing countries and Britain.

The EU is negotiating with seven countries from the 14-member SADC - Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Tanzania - as part of a wider effort to bring new trade agreements with developing countries into force by 2008.

The EU is eastern and southern Africa's largest trade partner, with total trade between the blocs estimated at €10 billion (R73 billion) annually. Trade between South Africa and the EU has risen 46 percent since 2000.

Mandelson said he was "dismayed and perplexed" that South Africa had not offered to liberalise its services in the Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations. The EU wants to see headway on services globally, to compensate for its offer to cut farm subsidies.

"We have yet to see even an initial offer or request," he told an audience at the SA Institute of International Affairs. "There must be areas that South Africa is ready to make an offer in now. Let us hear what they are."

Mandelson declined to say exactly how trade and industry minister Mandisi Mpahlwa had responded to his request but said he had not been told there wasn't an offer on the table.

South Africa could help in global trade talks by acknowledging that their success did not hinge on the EU making further cuts in farm subsidies, Mandelson added.

The EU's offer to cut farm import tariffs by an average of 38 percent by 2013 has been criticised by Brazil, the US, Australia and many other countries as too modest and the reason why WTO negotiations were running behind schedule.

If Europe accepted the demands of the US, it would wipe out between half and one-third of trade in those products between Europe and poor developing countries, Mandelson said.

The real gains in WTO talks would come in trade between developing countries, which already amounted to 40 percent of their exports and 70 percent of the duties they paid. – Reuters


 * From: http://busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=&fArticleId=3107803**

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