GENEVA (AFP) - After working through the weekend, the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) top official circulated the draft of a declaration to be issued at a crucial ministerial trade summit in Mexico in two weeks.
The highly-anticipated, 21-page revised outline text covers key areas in the current Doha round of free trade negotiations, including agricultural subsidies and market access for industrial products.
Although its contents are not yet agreed, it suggests frameworks, mostly without figures, for ministers of the 146-strong WTO to agree at the September 10-14 meeting in the Mexican resort of Cancun.
Entrenched positions among countries as well as a flurry of new proposals last week held up the release of the draft declaration, originally due to be published on Friday.
Diplomats waited patiently late into the evening at WTO headquarters for the document's release, which negotiators will mull over before meeting on Monday to give their initial reactions.
On agriculture, the draft text reflects some elements of a joint EU and US plan, released on August 13, but gives more detail on special provisions for developing countries.
It calls for an elimination of export subsidies for products "of particular interest to developing countries".
For remaining products, it proposes reductions "with a view to phasing out, budgetary and quantity allowances for export subsidies", although it adds that the target phasing-out date is still open for negotiation.
Tariff reductions by developed countries should be managed under a "blended" formula involving gentler average cuts for some products, as well as steeper cuts on higher tariffs for others.
The draft text offers alternative solutions for developing countries, but states that they should benefit from "lower tariff reductions and longer implementation periods".
Concerning state aid for farmers, meanwhile, the text calls for limits on certain types of support.
Brazil, India and China last week led a group of 17 developing countries in calling for a substantial reduction of all subsidies to farmers in what amounted to more far-reaching demands than those contained in the EU-US proposal, and for the elimination of all export subsidies.
The latest revised Cancun declaration is more detailed than the initial "skeletal" version of July 18 circulated before WTO diplomats left for their two-week summer break.
"We also renew our determination to conclude the negotiations launched at Doha successfully by the agreed date of 1 January 2005," the latest draft text says.
It addresses another highly controversial area, rules on investment policy, in an apparently contradictory fashion -- at once proposing that ministers decide to begin negotiations, while also stating that the "situation does not provide a basis for the commencement of negotiations in this area".
The 15-nation European Union and Japan are among the leading proponents for the negotiations on investment, among them the four Singapore issues, so called after they were first tackled at the WTO Singapore ministerial meeting in 1996.
Ground rules for competition, ensuring transparency in government bidding processes and facilitating trade make up the other three issues -- which have met with opposition from African countries.
No draft proposals are offered in the outline text on the longstanding and controversial problem of ensuring that patent rules do not bar poor countries without their own pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity from access to cheaper medicines.
After WTO countries failed to resolve the matter by the end-2002 deadline, the draft text simply states that ministers welcome a decision on resolving the issue.
And in a break from the July 18 text, the latest paper "takes note" of a proposal by four west and central African cotton-producing countries, led by Burkina Faso, for developed countries to drop cotton subsidies.
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