OTTAWA -- Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew sees next week's World Trade Organization talks in Montreal as the last chance before a full summit in September for his WTO counterparts to decide how serious they are about eliminating $300-billion (U.S.) in annual farm subsidies.
Mr. Pettigrew took direct aim at European and U.S. government farm largesse that hurts producers from Canada to Africa by depressing international prices for their crops.
"The cotton farmer of Mali, who needs to have a certain amount of money for his pound of cotton in order to feed his family, and educate it, [can't earn] the money he needs . . . because a farmer in the United States gets $160,000 a year, whatever the [market] price," Mr. Pettigrew said.
Mr. Pettigrew, who is chairing and hosting the Montreal WTO meeting, said it will be crucial in gauging whether the body's 146 member countries need to scale back their objectives for the global free-trade talks launched in Doha, Qatar, in 2001.
"How far are we ready to go in really negotiating new rules in agriculture trade? To seriously eliminate subsidies? We committed in Doha to take a kick at the can. Now has our level of ambition increased or decreased?" he said.
Countries will have to decide whether they want to scale back or expand WTO trade negotiations, not only on agriculture but also on reducing barriers for industrial goods and services trade, the Trade Minister said.
The September trade summit in Cancun, Mexico, was supposed to be the midpoint meeting in the so-called Doha round of WTO trade talks, the first new round of discussions aimed at liberalizing world commerce in 15 years.
But the Mexican meeting is at risk of failure because developing countries, which dominate its membership, are angry about the lack of progress in agricultural trade and other issues. A collapse of the talks could undermine the legitimacy of the eight-year-old WTO -- which functions as a United Nations of 146 trading nations -- and usher in more protectionism.
Trade watchers described the agenda for the Montreal WTO talks more bluntly, saying they are aimed at rescuing Cancun. "People are scrambling to salvage as much as they can," veteran trade consultant Peter Clark said.
Mr. Pettigrew said the 25 key foreign ministers meeting in Montreal will be taking stock of the WTO's mood for trade liberalization. He said it's possible the result will be less ambitious talks for Cancun.
"Some members might say, 'Listen, we've got to be realistic: we're still interested in a round but we don't have a high level of ambition. We don't think we can really, in agriculture, or . . . industrial goods, go very far."
Key players coming to Montreal include U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler.
The Montreal meeting is the last meeting of foreign trade ministers before Cancun. Poor countries want major concessions because they feel they got a raw deal in the previous Uruguay round of talks that concluded in 1994, when they granted access to their own markets and agreed to freer global trade rules.
Developing countries want the same thing they asked for before the Doha round. They want rich countries to drop barriers to farm products trade that shut them out of wealthy markets, and they want easy access to cheap medicine in the event of public health crises ranging from AIDS to malaria.
The so-called Doha round in Qatar got off the ground only after industrialized countries pledged greater action on medicines and agriculture.
But little progress has been made since Doha. The United States angered many countries by unveiling another $190-billion in farm subsidies and slapping huge tariffs on foreign steel to protect its industry, and the European Union has pledged limited reforms.
Mr. Pettigrew said the WTO talks could expand to cover more controversial topics, such as investment and competition policy rules if Montreal goes well.
Mr. Pettigrew described the global market as plagued by "a folly of subsidies" and said the WTO needs to decide whether it can "make serious progress on agricultural trade -- on which we have never really had a serious kick at the can" in past global talks. The Cancun WTO summit was supposed to be a midterm review of the Doha round of free-trade talks that are scheduled to conclude in a deal in 2005 -- a deadline few observers now believe will be met.
Canada has a big stake in liberalizing world trade because it's highly dependent on open markets and lacks the power of major economic blocs. "We are a country that trades a lot more than any other industrialized country and we don't have the clout that the European Union or the United States has," Mr. Pettigrew said.
The Trade Minister called on developing countries to offer more access to their markets in WTO talks in Montreal. "I think at the moment the developing countries are not putting enough on the table on industrial goods," he said.
He said poorer countries must shelve their complaints about past mistreatment and instead offer up their bottom-line negotiating positions.
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