Trade ministers seek way to 2010 Doha deal

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy speaks during a business meeting organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in New Delhi September 3, 2009. Key trade ministers met on Thursday to work out how to turn political leaders' pledges to complete the Doha round trade talks by 2010 into reality.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Key trade ministers met on Thursday to work out how to turn political leaders' pledges to complete the Doha round trade talks by 2010 into reality.

The two-day meeting of about 35 ministers, hosted by an India determined to shake off its image as the spoiler in the talks, aims to draw up a road map to close the remaining gaps in the World Trade Organisation negotiations by the end of next year rather than tackling specific issues.

"Let's be frank in acknowledging that even the unequivocal expression of political resolve has not yet been translated into action," the host, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma told ministers in a welcome address.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy described the dilemma in a characteristically colourful image.

"Given the sort of 2010 deadline which leaders have given us... given what's happening and not happening in the Geneva kitchen, we need a stronger linkage between what the dining room says and what the kitchen does," he said.

The talks, now in their eighth year, could produce a deal that boosts the global economy by $300-700 billion a year, according to one recent study, although other estimates of the benefits have been lower.

The negotiations were launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001 to create new trading opportunities and remove imbalances in global trade that put developing countries at a disadvantage.

Since then they have missed many self-imposed deadlines as exporters and importers, rich and poor fight over which tariffs and subsidies to cut and which sectors to open up.

END GAME

Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, told the meeting it was clear the talks were now in the end game -- a view expressed earlier by Lamy and Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean.

Declaring the end game is important as it means negotiators in Geneva can get down to business to clinch the final bargains.

But it also suggests they cannot reopen what has been painfully agreed over the last few years and try and push the deal in a different direction.

"This implies a presumption that we have the outlines of a deal, which can be marginally adjusted, but not significantly changed," Amorim told the meeting.

Amorim, a keen supporter of a deal as Brazil becomes an agricultural superpower, warned the United States against trying to change the round from its mandated aim of helping developing countries into a quest for new business opportunities.

"If you want to change and transform the very essence of this round from a development round, a round that was centred on agriculture, to something that is how to extract more from emerging countries in manufactureds ... then it won't happen, that's all," he told Reuters.

Amorim, Sharma and other ministers from developing countries are determined to entrench the nature of Doha as a round to promote development.

But up to 1,000 farmers, many carrying bows and arrows, marched through New Delhi near parliament to protest against the meeting, waving placards such as "Pascal Lamy go back" and "Save farmers, save farms".

"This WTO is a monster. We will be finished. The government should do something," Het Ram, a farmer aged 48, told Reuters.

The farmers fear that Sharma's readiness to promote a Doha deal means he will soften India's tough stance on measures such as a proposed safeguard to help poor farmers in developing countries cope with a flood of food imports.

That was one of a handful of issues that sunk a round of ministerial negotiations in July last year amid rancour between India and the United States.

Lamy said it was an oversimplification to see the row over the safeguard as a North-South clash, as it also pitted developing food exporters such as Thailand and Paraguay against less competitive farm states such as India and Indonesia.

Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu said developing countries favouring a strong safeguard had tabled proposals to address the concerns of the developing exporters, and she believed their differences could be resolved.

"The problem is not the other developing countries, it's the major developed countries. We haven't started to talk about it so we don't know how much flexibility they're willing to show," she told Reuters.

Another fear in New Delhi is the Americans are simply not ready for the end game, as they have more pressing priorities than trade such as healthcare and the financial crisis.

Officials from some countries say the United States is not yet able to say specifically what it wants in order to close the deal, in contrast to demanding more market access in general.

But in a sign that the administration is getting its trade strategy in place, President Barack Obama nominated Michael Punke, a former trade policy adviser, to fill a key role in the team -- that of U.S. ambassador to the WTO.

(Additional reporting by Surojit Gupta and Bappa Majumdar)