Africa: WTO Braces for Make Or Break Doha Talks

WTO Braces for Make Or Break Doha Talks

Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
7 August 2007
Posted to the web 7 August 2007
By Martin Khor
The World Trade Organisation broke for its one-month summer break after an uneventful General Council meeting on Friday which dealt mainly with regular agenda items such as review of waivers and various work programmes.
The WTO members appeared relieved that there was not a more serious session, after they had gone through stressful and eventful meetings of the past three days - the review of agricultural modalities draft on Tuesday, the review of the non-agricultural market access (NAMA) modalities draft on Wednesday and the Trade Negotiations Committee on Thursday.
However, as they left for the break, many diplomats were wondering what will happen in September, which is widely believed to be the crucial month in which the Doha negotiations will finally "make or break."
The negotiating atmosphere has been badly damaged by the strong negative reaction by most developing-country groupings to the NAMA draft of Canadian Ambassador Don Stephenson. In the Wednesday and Thursday meetings, they strongly attacked the draft for being biased, prejudging the negotiations, and for having the potential to harm the industrialisation prospects of developing countries.
In contrast, WTO members seemed able to broadly accept the agriculture draft of Ambassador Crawford Falconer of New Zealand as one that can facilitate further negotiations, even though most groups and members that spoke found problems with various elements of the paper.
Also in September, meetings are expected on other aspects of the Doha agenda, including services and rules. It will be a full and intense month, in the atmosphere of "this is the last chance to save the Round", as a couple of Ambassadors put it at this week's meetings.
It is generally thought that by October, the United States will be pre-occupied with its Presidential elections, and would not be able to focus on the Doha talks, and it would also be clear by then that there would be no fast-track authority renewal.
But the September "invisible deadline" has instead suffered a severe setback, with a majority of developing countries feeling and expressing a strong alienation from or even revulsion of the NAMA paper.
This has left the next steps of the negotiations in even greater uncertainty.
The TNC meeting on Thursday ended without a substantive conclusion from Lamy. Some delegates had expected him to proclaim the two drafts to be the basis for September's negotiations, but the battering that the NAMA draft received made it unwise for any attempt to be made to bless either text as even a basis for negotiations.
The writer is the director of Third World Network

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