Economic shifts cast WTO talks in new light - France

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - Rising food prices and the use of export restrictions to secure national stocks of rice, wheat and other staples have cast World Trade Organisation talks in a new light, raising questions about their scope, a French minister said on Friday.

Anne-Marie Idrac, France's junior trade minister, said economic conditions had shifted radically since global free trade talks began in 2001.

"From a point of view of the social and economic reality, this is a new and different context," she told journalists at the WTO's Geneva headquarters. "This new context raises all sorts of new questions."

Surging commodity prices have spurred countries including Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Egypt, Cambodia, Pakistan, Russia, Argentina and Malawi to impose curbs on food exports in order to ensure their domestic supplies remain plentiful.

Such moves lie counter to the spirit of the WTO's intended Doha round deal, which is meant to make it easier to export and sell agricultural and other goods in overseas markets.

Idrac said it was not yet clear how these contradictions will impact on the WTO talks which have to date not addressed ways to limit countries' use of such export restrictions.

Negotiations over a WTO accord, in their seventh year, have struggled to overcome many countries' reluctance to expose their industries to foreign competition that could cause job losses and economic upset in some sectors while boosting overall cross-border commercial flows.

Idrac said "there is a lot of work to do" to wrap up the talks spanning all elements of international trade, including shipments of food, fuels, cars and clothes, and cross-border services such as transportation.