November 18, Geneva: In a post-green room session, a senior World Trade Organisation official types out an intra-office communique: `No progress on the various issues'.
December 3, 4.00 am, Seattle: Officials, sleepless for four nights, tumble out of a green-room session shaking their heads. "No way," says one of them.
A few hours later it's all over, as the African countries, excluded from the final leg of negotiations, threaten to walk out. "...as long as due respect for the procedures and procedures of transparency, openness and participation that allow for adequately balanced results do not exist, we will not join the consensus to meet the objectives of this ministerial conference," remarked a communique from the Organisation of African Unity.
And, it was left to the meeting's chairperson and US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to carry out the formalities and bring the gavel down on a stalemate.
Yet when the meetings kicked off on November 30, not many had anticipated such a tame ending. But on hindsight, it can be clearly inferred that the collapse of the trade talks was waiting to happen.
The talks began in the background of mutual suspicion. To top it all, the bilaterals and networking that preceded the formal sessions saw substantive posturing by the Big Two of world trade: host country United States and the European Union.
And this in the background of the fact that the deliberations had moved to Seattle with the bulk of the issues yet to be resolved. Almost the entire draft declaration was in brackets _ which basically means that there is no agreement whatsoever about the text. It was a clear indication that the stakes were high because the agenda for what was being dubbed the millennium round would determine the future course of global trade.
For the US leadership, an additional dimension to its agenda was that the meetings had been scheduled bang in the middle of the run-up to the presidential elections. Almost everyone expected the US to posture. But what took everyone by surprise was the tacit support it extended to the clutch of non-governmental organisations, which demanded the inclusion of labour and environment standards in the trade agenda.
The bad feelings about the US administration were reinforced with the arrival of president Clinton. Just before his arrival in what many believe to be a carefully planned move, an interview was granted to a Seattle daily. In that, Clinton was quoted as demanding trade sanctions against countries that did not enforce labour standards.
A day after the inaugural session was called off due to picketing and arson by NGO activists, Clinton reinforced popular sentiment. "If the WTO expects public support to grow for its endeavours, the public must see and hear and, in a very real sense, actually join in the deliberations. That's the only way they can know the process is fai
