Hong Kong, 16/12/2005 (Agence Europe) - Under the impetus of Brazil and despite internal division, the developing countries of the WTO formed, on Friday, a G20-G33-G90 “platform” around the agricultural question in the aim of getting developed countries to “eliminate all forms of distortion that hamper growth in exports from developing countries and provisions providing an adequate political area to ensure the sustainability of their economic development”. This new initiative curiously coincided with the Hong Kong talks being bogged down over the farm dossier, mainly on the question of a date for the end of export subsidies. Europeans, Americans and Australians have been casting blame on each other since Tuesday over this, the Union still being reticent about accepting the date of 2010 until strict parallelism has been established between its export subsidies, export credits and American food aid and the commercial state farms of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In a joint statement, the “platform” calls on developed countries to agree on full elimination of all forms of export subsidies by 2010 while taking seriously into account the specific needs of LDC and developing countries that are net agricultural importers. The statement stresses the need for a substantial reduction in internal subsidies that distort trade the most and a substantial improvement in market access for developed countries for exports of products in which the developing countries have special interest. The G20-G33-G90 “platform” also stresses the importance of special and differentiated treatment in the three pillars of farm talks. In this context, it notes the role of “special products” and “special safeguard mechanisms” as means with which to give a response, in the context of the “market access” pillar, to the concerns of developing countries regarding food safety, rural development and the standard of living. Finally, it demands that a “concrete result come out of Hong Kong” on questions of duty and quota-free market access for LDC and on the question of cotton (see other article). During a joint press conference, the Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorin, nonetheless denied the constitution of an “alliance” aimed at opening a South-North conflict when negotiations on all the chapters of the Doha Round seemed, on Friday, to be paralysed.
Earlier that afternoon, and after a night of non-constructive talks in Greenroom, Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson had deplored the fact that the Hong Kong negotiations had gone backward rather than moving forward. He nonetheless said it would be difficult to reach an agreement in the present state of the talks and he found that, the way things were going, the situation looked “worrying”. Mr Mandelson again accused the Union's partners at the WTO of focusing on the agricultural dossier, of not offering any credible proposal on all the issues and of compromising the possibility of reaching an agreement in Hong Kong. Although he underlined the clear differences with the United States on the whole of the agricultural dossier, Mr Mandelson gave his assurance that the Americans and Europeans share a common position when it comes to the non-agricultural goods chapter (NAMA) and services.