MONTREAL -- A small gathering of the World Trade Organization this week highlighted the need for swifter progress, especially on farm subsidies, to keep negotiations for a global trade treaty on track, Canada's trade minister said Wednesday.
Pierre Pettigrew, who chaired the informal meeting of 25 trade ministers in Montreal, expressed cautious optimism at the end of the talks.
Pettigrew said his assessment is fuelled in large part by some new offers made by the United States and the European Community, two of the most powerful members of the WTO, in the area of agriculture.
The Europeans have proposed reducing domestic farm support by 60 per cent, while the United States has said it will work to completely eliminate its export subsidies.
Progress on a deal has been hampered over the key issue of agriculture.
Canada and developing countries are among those calling for the elimination of about $300 billion US in annual farm subsidies they say depress international prices and limit their access to foreign markets. But there are also calls for a reduction of domestic support and improved market access.
"The last few days have been a useful reality check,'' Pettigrew told a news conference at the end of the meetings, which took place under tight security at a downtown hotel.
"However, significant gaps remain.''
Pettigrew said the meeting, which did not produce a draft text, met his goal of tightening the WTO's focus and identifying areas where more compromise is needed heading into a crucial meeting of the entire WTO Sept. 10-14 in Cancun, Mexico.
"There's a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time to do it,'' said Pettigrew.
The Cancun meeting is the halfway point on the road to reaching a deal to open up international commerce by a deadline of Jan. 1, 2005. The mandate for negotiations was agreed to in November 2001 in Doha, Qatar, and the negotiations have become known as the Doha Development Agenda.
With membership of the WTO dominated by developing countries, they have promised to hold fast to their demands for significant compromise on agriculture.
Outside the heavily guarded security perimeter surrounding the Sheraton Centre where the WTO members met, protesters stayed true to their promise to confront the meetings with their message that the WTO is too secretive and concerned with profit at the expense of the world's poorest citizens.
More than 230 people were arrested Monday following a noisy protest through the downtown streets that ended with the vandalism of some stores and restaurants, as well as luxury vehicles.
Two demonstrations on Tuesday were smaller and more peaceful and the activists wrapped up five days of events Wednesday with an "anti-capitalist carnival'' in a park several blocks away from the downtown core.
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