BRUSSELS (AFP) - European Union foreign ministers meeting here stressed in a joint statement their determination that a September World Trade Organization ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico should be a success.
The ministers Monday "reiterated the EU determination that the Cancun conference should succeed and considered in this regard that all participants should intensify their efforts in the coming weeks in Geneva with a view to presenting a manageable document to ministers in Cancun on the key issues."
These included liberalization of farm trade, access by poor countries to medicines and establishing a timetable on the negotiations on services.
The Europeans stressed however that their desire for success had a price, namely farm policy.
Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) decided on in June "constituted an important European contribution to the negotiations on agriculture and the limits of the Commission's negotiating brief in the WTO round...
"The margin of manoeuvre offered by the CAP reform could only be used... on condition of equivalent agricultural concessions from the EU's WTO partners," the ministers said.
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