CANCUN, Mexico (CP) - Talks designed to change the face of trade around the world collapsed Sunday amid differences between rich and poor countries, the second failure for the World Trade Organization in four years.
Delegates from many poor countries celebrated what they called a victory against the West and an increasingly powerful alliance of poor but populous farming countries said they have found a new voice to rival the developed world. "The developing countries have come into their own," said Malaysia's minister for international trade and investment, Rafidah Aziz.
"This has made it clear that developing countries cannot be dictated to by anybody."
Poor countries, many of which had banded together to play a key role in negotiations, wanted to end rich countries' agricultural subsidies. European countries and Japan were intent on pushing four new issues many poor countries saw as a complicated and costly distraction.
Hours later, the meeting's chairman, Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez, declared the meeting over, saying: "Unfortunately, we didn't achieve the advances we had proposed to achieve" and pledging to work toward completing negotiations in the future.
In the end, it was the diverging agendas of member countries that split delegates beyond the point of repair.
Many poor countries accused the United States and Europe of trying to bully poor countries into accepting trade rules they didn't want.
"Trade ministers have been pressured, blackmailed," said Irene Ovonji Odida, a delegate from Uganda.
"Canada is disappointed with the results...but we will continue to work on getting this agenda back on track and on keeping our eyes on the prize we all seek - a balanced and a critical global trading system that will benefit Canada's economy, as well as the developing countries," Sebastien Theberge, spokesman for Canadian International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew said.
Pettigrew and Minister of Agriculture Lyle Vanclief released a joint statement late Sunday saying gaps in negotiating positions proved too large to bridge.
"Some issues discussed in Cancun this week were simply not at a stage where common ground could be found," the statement said. "We said Cancun would be a midpoint, a collective stock-taking of the Doha Development Agenda. This is not the end of the Doha Round. But it is a clear signal that we must redouble our efforts to build bridges and find consensus in the months ahead."
The United States blamed other countries it didn't name, saying some were more interested in flowery speeches than negotiations.
"Useful compromise among 148 countries requires a serious willingness to focus on work - not rhetoric," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said in a statement.
The comment appeared to be directed at a group of poor countries - often known as the Group of 20-plus - that emerged as the major opposition to the U.S. and European positions. Leaders of that group said they had brought concrete issues to the table that would be the basis for future trade talks.
"We emerge from this process stronger than we came into it," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said.
Ecuador's foreign trade minister, Ivonne Baki, added: "It's not the end. It's the beginning."
It was the second time WTO talks have collapsed in four years, and a major blow to efforts to regulate the world's trade. EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said the round of talks isn't dead "but it certainly needs intensive care."
"We could have gained - all of us," he said.
"We lost - all of us."
The failure in Cancun was a blow to the WTO, and called into question the organization's ability to reach a global trade treaty by the end of next year - a goal WTO members set for themselves at a meeting two years ago in Doha, Qatar.
"It's hard for me to believe that in the position we're in now we'll be able to finish on time," Zoellick said.
Lamy was harsher: "The WTO remains a medieval organization. The procedures, the rules of this organization cannot support the weight of its task."
But Amorim said real progress had been made and the WTO would continue to negotiate the same points in the future on the basis of advances made in Cancun.
"It's a setback not to have a result now," he said.
"But we are optimistic in the long run."
WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi called for ministers to report back to him by mid-December to decide how to proceed.
Before the talks collapsed, delegates spent Sunday debating not the changes to farming policy they had spent much of the conference negotiating but instead four proposals about foreign investment and competition.
Delegates said the Europeans agreed to back off on three of the proposals but insisted they be granted one. South Korea wanted all four taken up together and African countries refused to negotiate on any of them, said an EU official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The announcement of the collapse of the talks took some delegates by surprise. One journalist ran into a briefing by U.S. trade officials, demanding reaction. Deputy U.S. trade representative Josette Shiner was visibly startled and said she would look into it.
The collapse was similar to the downfall of talks in 1999, when street riots and divisions between WTO members sank attempts to launch a new round of trade negotiations. In Cancun, there were protests as well but they didn't gather the momentum that demonstrations did in Seattle.
"No one can feel satisfied with a failure," said Argentina's trade secretary, Martin Redrado.
"All of us would have be better off with new rules."
Theberge said Canada remains "fully engaged in the Doha round."
In the agriculture talks, poor countries had hoped to slash subsidies rich countries pay their farmers, making it easier for their farmers to compete in a global economy. Some countries also wanted to lower the tariffs many countries charge for importing farm goods.
Doing so could have dramatically altered farming around the world. Some farmers could have found new markets for their crops. Others would have struggled to compete without the subsidies that keep them in business. Consumers could have bought cheaper fruits, vegetables and meat from distant shores.
Advocacy groups, who spent much of the meeting working with developing countries to make sure their voices were heard, sang and danced in the hallways of the conference centre as the talks collapsed. Many hugged one another.
"Our world is not for sale, my friend, just to keep you satisfied," they sang to the tune of the Beatles' Can't Buy Me Love.
"You say you'll bring us health and wealth, well we know that you just lied."
The failure of the talks means governments, particularly those from developed countries, must seriously re-think and reorient their trade policies, said Jean-Louis Roy, president of the Montreal-based human-rights group Rights and Democracy.
"I support the countries that walked out," said Roy, whose organization observed the negotiations in Cancun all week.
"We have known for years how important serious reform in agricultural trade is. Without fundamental change, we can anticipate the death of over 300 million people in the next 10 years from hunger and hunger-related diseases."
"All along, we have known what had to be done: end the dumping that was destroying the livelihoods of small farmers in developing countries, give equitable market access to developing countries and place the right to food at the centre of the agenda."
"This meeting failed on all counts."
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