Brussels / Doha, 12/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - The 142 member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which has been meeting in ministerial conference since last Friday in Doha, began, on Monday, the marathon that is to lead them to launching a new round of talks or putting the project off indefinitely for the second time. It was a big gamble, on Tuesday, after four days of preliminary discussions marked by countless long-winded verbiage from (op-)positions present and intense "confessional" sessions on issues that could make the collective goodwill fail. "Things are beginning to move along the right lines", convergent sources said the day before, tabling on an imminent compromise in the American-Indian muscling wrestling bout over access to medicines and the protection of pharmaceutical patents.
Since Sunday, this problem and the other more controversial issues have been subject to consultation headed by facilitators, known as "Friends of the Presidency":
1. Mexican national Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista, who could be the first to reach a ministerial compromise - provided that the solution shaping up passes the test of the plenary committee - around a political commitment to facilitate access to medicines without hampering the protection of patents procured by the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The knot of the problem was Article 4 of the draft declaration relating to the scope of the commitment, namely that it is appropriate to limit this flexibility to crisis situations such as epidemics, as the Americans and the Swiss in particular hoped, or to extend it to public health protection in general. The American idea of establishing a moratorium until 2016, which would allow some developing countries not to apply TRIPS during this period in order to counter an epidemic, appeared far too restrictive for most participants, including the Europeans. Diplomatic sources state, moreover, that some developing countries seemed to distance themselves from the "untenable position" defended by India, and showed a new tendency to "listen and enter into a dialectic of language" to find wording that could be the subject of consensus, without confining it to a handful of countries in difficulty and to a single disease, as Washington proposed, but without having recourse to exemptions or reopening the Agreement.
According to the President of the Union Council, Belgian Minister Annemie Neyts, an "imminent agreement" was taking shape at the end of the afternoon on Monday around this particularly sensitive problem. With all the reservation imposed by this still early stage and the magnitude of talks in Doha where nothing will be achieved until everything has been settled, the final draft of the ministerial declaration, which was to be submitted to the plenary committee that evening, reaffirms the need to ensure access by countries in a situation of health crisis to medicines needed by the population, while continuing to include such actions in the context of the TRIPS Agreement. The 10 or 11 paragraphs of which it is composed are "comprehensive" and represent "far more than a declaration of good intent", said Ms Neyts. Work, however, should continue in Geneva on the substance of the problem, with a view to proposing solutions by 2002, mainly concerning the situation in countries that do not have production capacity, a case that is clearly not taken up in the Agreement. "It will not be settled here", said the European spokesperson, considering that several instruments could be envisaged, mainly the authorisation of parallel imports or a preferential price system. Furthermore, the least developed countries should benefit from the moratorium mentioned above until 2016, said Ms Neyts.
2. George Yeo, from Singapore, who had already skilfully raised the challenge in Seattle, took on the agricultural dossier, which is traditionally the source of conflict and rivalry between Europeans, Japan and the other supporters of the specific nature of the sector and the Cairns Group, which tends towards wholesale liberalisation and finds a natural ally in the United States but not on all points. On the two most difficult aspects of the text under discussion, namely: - the declared aim to phase out all forms of export subsidies, the Union (constrained by the exaggerated sensitivity of France which recently repeated that the text appears "very bad and far from the mandate entrusted to Pascal Lamy" and which sent its Finance Minister, Laurent Fabius, on the spot), still refused to commit itself in advance on the result of negotiations. On the other side of the spectrum, Cairns continued to reject all attempts that would be tantamount to reviewing collective ambitions downward. Canada, one of the influential members of the group, nonetheless made a conciliatory gesture, suggesting to the Assembly that it reflect on a more consensual wording. The Europeans jumped at this opportunity with obvious relief and Mr Fischler set to the task immediately; the mention of non-commercial concerns that the Europeans want to flesh-out and Cairns to sweeten, so much so that the former were reduced, Monday morning, to "defending the text as such", i.e., a simple reference that the Americans seem to be able to accept. Two days previously, Commissioner Fischler had succeeded in rallying some forty countries, developed and developing, including Russia and China, Mauritius, Japan and South Korea, to speak of these concerns, convince the "sceptics" of the lack of any form of protectionism and demonstrate that many other shared them. Despite the slow nature of the process and the apparent rigidity of the stances, Mr. Yeo said he was optimistic, trusting a "conducive and good atmosphere" that reigned in Doha.
3. Chilean Minister Heraldo Munoz Valenzuela was handed the responsibility of particularly difficult discussions on the environment. The Europeans were still practically isolated, Monday, faced with the general tendency that was either to accept the minimalist text under discussion or reduce their ambitions. The President-in-Office of the Council, Ms. Neyts, considered, however, that all was not lost for the Union, whose essential demands and "major concerns" is to clarify the interface between international trading and environmental rules. "It seems that we are close to seeing that accepted", she ventured, just before the last furlong in talks, stipulating that for the final draft to be accepted by the Europeans, it would have to "reflect a solid environmental concern" and provide for "the implementation of a serious working programme and, if possible, negotiations".
The other problems were dealt with under the auspices of the Minister concerned - Pascal Couchpin (Switzerland) for the implementation of agreements from the previous trade round (strong resistance from countries like Japan and North Korea to fishing subsidies; the United States on easing anti-dumping measures and access to textile markets, etc); Alec Erwin (South Africa) on WTO rules, with notable progress in terms of the text on regional agreements but not on anti-dumping measures; Pierre Pettigrew (Canada) on the "Singapore" issues like competition and investment. The framework agreement sought by the Europeans on competition and investment seems to be of interest to emerging economies in Latin America and Singapore, but most developing countries (particularly India and Malaysia) continue to oppose the idea. The solution might be to separate off the two subjects taking the approach mentioned by Mr Pettigrew in his report to the plenary committee where he said that given the different characteristics of the two issues, solutions to competition questions cannot be the same as for investment issues. Finally, on the social affairs front, one of the many issues laid before Stuart Harbison (Ambassador of Hong Kong) who wrote the documents under discussion, the nitty gritty of the negotiations had not been yet been reached on Monday afternoon.
Accession by China and Taiwan
On Sunday, the WTO gave its formal clearance for accession by China and Taiwan. Some 2000 delegates gave an ovation to the chief negotiator of the most populated country in the world, who was obviously moved by this "historic" and long-awaited decision. The two Chinas, neighbour and rival for nearly half a century, will thus become full members of the same "club" within the thirty days that follow ratification of the agreement by the relevant national bodies, that is on 11 December for the People's Republic and the day after for Taiwan. A concert of congratulations was heard, each welcoming in his own way the enlargement of the institution to two countries that already appear as the 9th and 16th economic powers and the integration of nearly a quarter of the world's population and as many potential consumers.