WTO remains divided over Doha talks

Key members of the World Trade Organisation yesterday remained sharply polarised on how to conduct negotiations on the difficult issues in the Doha trade talks ahead of the much-talked-about ministerial meeting, trade diplomats said.

India insisted that "substance" must take precedence over artificial deadlines and substantive work should be conducted within each negotiating body before deciding the horizontal process.

World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy convened a "green room" meeting yesterday to discuss the "scope" and "process" to be adopted for the "horizontal meetings" that aim to zero in on tradeoffs in various areas among members, the envoys added.

About 30 select trade envoys took part in the meeting that is often used by the director general to test various proposals before they are submitted to full membership.

The meeting revealed sharp differences among members on a variety of issues as well as the complete isolation of the US on the issue of having a revised rules text to improve the anti-dumping provisions, the diplomats said.

Along with a majority of countries, India pressed for substantial progress within the respective Doha negotiating dossiers "" agriculture, market-opening for industrials, rules and services "" before launching any "horizontal" consultations, diplomats said.

Indian trade envoy Ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia told the closed-door meeting that it wants to see revised texts on Doha agriculture, market-opening for industrials, rules that include improvements in anti-dumping provisions and fishery subsidies, and much more clarity on a signaling conference on trade in services.

India said unless there was progress in the "gateway" issues such as the market access for sensitive farm products in industrialised countries, the coefficients to be used in the Swiss formula to cut industrial tariffs, and the prohibition of zeroing methodology in the anti-dumping measures, there should not be any push for horizontal meetings.

In sharp contrast, the European Union, Costa Rica, Chile among others wanted horizontal consultations to begin immediately so as to finalise the modalities (benchmarks) in agriculture and market-opening for industrials by the end of next month. The benchmarks would suggest the level of tariff and subsidy cuts in agriculture and tariff cuts in industrial products.

The EU also demanded the inclusion of Geographical Indications in the horizontal meetings but a majority of countries opposed Brussels' demand, arguing that they would like to see protection of intellectual norms for genetic material.

Amid sharp differences among trade envoys on how to address the conflicting demands on a revised rules text, the WTO chief decided to hold another meeting next week to narrow differences, trade envoys said.

Significantly, the US was completely isolated at the green room meeting on its opposition to having a revised rules text at this juncture.

A large majority of countries who demanded the revised rules text want to see that the zeroing methodology used in calculating anti-dumping margins is completely prohibited.

Only the US wants to continue with the zeroing methodology because of its continued use by its anti-dumping authorities. In a move to help the US, the earlier draft text included provisions to legalise zeroing methodology despite overwhelming opposition from WTO members.