OTTAWA (Reuters) - Top trade ministers will meet in Montreal next week, but few expect breakthroughs on divisive issues like cutting farm subsidies or winning better access for poor countries to life-saving medicines.
The talks, bringing together ministers from 23 rich and middle-income countries, are part of the run-up to a ministerial meeting of the 146-member World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
The Montreal gathering will prepare the ground for that meeting, rather than making promises and setting policy.
"Any action by the WTO has to involve all 146 members. So these mini-ministerials are really not decision-making meetings," said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.
"On agriculture, the near term question is for us to learn more about what cuts the European Union could make," he said, adding he wants to learn what the EU could do on opening up its market to farm goods -- something that developing countries have been demanding for years.
The talks, like others in the latest round of trade meetings, take place amid the threat of protests from anti-globalization activists who say the negotiations are not doing enough to open up markets so poor countries can sell their goods.
The activists expect a daily turnout of only 1,000 or so and promise peaceful protests. But such global gatherings have seen violent demonstrations in recent years and the first hotel scheduled to host the talks pulled out at short notice because it was afraid demonstrations would turn ugly.
"We don't want any more hierarchies. What we want to see, for example, is workers taking control of their factories," protest organizer Melanie Sylvestre said.
Participants at the three days of Montreal talks include trade ministers from the United States and the EU, as well as China, Japan, India, South Africa and Brazil.
"South American countries are ready to put everything on the table -- investments, services, industrial goods -- but the precondition is that we have a level playing field," Argentina's chief trade negotiator Martin Redrado said in Buenos Aires.
"If the EU and United States don't relent on domestic and export subsidies, it will be hard to level the playing field."
Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew said key topics include how to open the $500 billion world market in farm goods and how to waive patent rules so poor countries can import cheap medicines to fight AIDS (news - web sites), tuberculosis and malaria.
A top U.S. official this week said his delegation did not plan to present any new initiatives in Montreal, but French Finance Minister Francis Mer urged Europe on Thursday to give more market access to farm goods from developing countries.
The meeting is the first since the European Union agreed last month to break the link between farmers' production and subsidies -- an incentive to overproduce that has been blamed for the EU's notorious wine lakes and butter mountains.
The world economy has been growing only slowly since 2000, so countries view liberalizing trade as one avenue to boost activity. The question is, who will give ground.
"If I had to pray for anything in church on Sunday, I'd pray that we make some breakthroughs in these seven weeks (before Cancun) that move the round forward, but it doesn't look particularly hopeful at the moment," Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said. (Additional reporting by Doug Palmer in Washington, Damian Wroclavsky in Buenos Aires and Andrew Hay in Brasilia.)
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