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 News from Around the Americas | December 2005 
Protests and Deadlocks Weigh on WTO Talks
 The Financial Times
| | WTO protest: Protesters shout anti World Trade Organization slogans during a demonstration in Jakarta. (AFP/Jewel Samad) |
Thousands of activists marched through Hong Kong on Tuesday and scuffled with anti-riot police in protest against the World Trade Organisation, as ministers from the body's 149 member countries opened talks to break the deadlock in the Doha trade round.
On Tuesday morning nearly 1,500 farmers - mostly South Koreans wearing red bandanas that said "Down with the WTO" and beating drums and gongs - rallied in Victoria Park, next to one of Hong Kong's busiest shopping districts.
The protesters then proceeded through Causeway Bay to Wan Chai where thousands of other activists and non-governmental organisation members joined them in marching to the convention centre where the WTO meeting officially opened. The protesters were stopped 500 meters short of the centre by anti-riot police.
Hong Kong's police are braced for potential violence during the biennial ministerial meetings which in the past have attracted both peaceful demonstrators from NGOs such as Oxfam and belligerent anti-globalisation activists.
South Korean farmers, who fear that a potential WTO agreement to cut agricultural subsidies and import tariffs will threaten their livelihoods, are among the most militant anti-trade activists in the region and may spark violence.
On Tuesday afternoon, a group of at least 50 South Korean protesters participating in the march threw themselves into Victoria Harbour and attempted to swim towards the convention centre.
As the protesters tried to break through a police roadblock and press on to the convention centre, police repelled them with pepper spray. One protester was injured.
Meanwhile, Pascal Lamy, the WTO's director general, officially opened the ministerial talks which will last for six days. He urged delegates to be "bold, open-minded and prepared to take some risks."
Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, read out a speech on behalf of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general.
"It is the time to find common ground. Progress has been made in the eleventh hour run-up to this conference. Your duty is to forge the political will needed to move forward in the days ahead," Mr Annan's message said.
Leading trade powers continued to scramble to assemble a package of trade and aid measures for the WTO's poorest members in an effort to pre-empt any repetition of the mass walkout that shut down the last ministerial meeting, in Cancϊn, Mexico, two years ago.
The US, the European Union and Japan all regard early agreement on a combination of cash and unrestricted access for poor countries' exports as essential to clear the way for negotiations at this week's meeting.
A senior diplomat from a developed nation said that, though many differences remained between the WTO's biggest members, discontent and frustration among the poorest countries posed the biggest threat to the six-day talks.
Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, said the package should be the first item on the agenda. "We need this down payment for developing countries here in Hong Kong because this is a development round and because it would pave the way for the serious development gains ... which will come from the core market access negotiations."
On Tuesday, the European Commission extended further assistance, pledging to increase its spending on trade-related aid to 1bn ($1.2bn) a year, up from 400m annually. "The European Union did not come to Hong Kong empty-handed on trade-related assistance," said Peter Power, a spokesman for Mr Mandelson.
Despite the offers of increased trade-related assistance, Kamal Nath, India's commerce minister, on Tuesday continued to highlight agriculture as one of the "inequalities of the global trading system" and pointed the blame squarely on the EU.
If the Doha round fails to result in an agreement to cut farm subsidies, "we must see a roadmap towards their elimination" he said.
"The EU is saying 'we will stop doing what we should not be doing [in the first place]' ... There should not be a price to be paid [by the developing countries] for that."
Mr Nath said it was up to the EU and US to determine specific figures on what tariff cuts they want and set a date for ending farm subsidies.
Rob Portman, US trade representative, said agreeing a package was important and joined the EU in welcoming Japan's announcement last week of a $10bn (8.4bn, £5.6bn) programme to promote poor countries' exports. He signalled that Washington planned to increase its aid and expand duty-free imports from the poorest WTO members.
Mr Mandelson offered the US an olive branch by dropping demands that it remove all its barriers to poor countries' exports. He acknowledged that domestic constraints made it hard for Washington and Tokyo to liberalise fully some politically sensitive imports, such as textiles and leather goods.
In spite of the commissioner's conciliatory tone, Mr Portman renewed pressure on the EU to do more to free farm trade. "Until we can solve the agricultural dilemma, it will be very, very difficult to make progress in the other areas," he said.
He described as "cynical" Brussels' claims that freer global farm trade would hurt poor countries, saying the EU was seeking to shelter its own producers from competition.
Celso Amorim, Brazil's foreign minister and leader of the Group of 20 developing-country agriculture producers, also criticised the EU. He said the trade round would not succeed unless Brussels improved substantially its offer to lower agricultural tariffs.
Details of the proposed trade and aid package have yet to be decided and may provoke heated argument. One potential flashpoint is Washington's resistance to demands by African countries, backed by the EU, for immediate cuts in its trade-distorting subsidies to US cotton farmers.
Even if that problem can be resolved, this week's talks face other issues that underline the growing acceptance that progress in the Doha round hinges on meeting long-standing concerns of developing countries, which account for four-fifths of the WTO's 149 members.
The concerns include fear that removal of trade barriers would reduce the value of preferential access to rich countries' markets and complaints by Latin American banana producers that revised EU trade arrangements penalise their exports.
The disagreements are complicated by deep divisions among poor countries. For instance, African and Caribbean banana producers, which have long enjoyed privileged EU treatment, fiercely oppose granting easier market access to their more efficient Latin American competitors. |
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