Brussels, 28/12/2005 (Agence Europe) - The agreement reached in Hong Kong is a betrayal of the promises made for development and "is a much better reflection of the interests of the rich countries than of those of the developing countries (DCs)", says Phil Bloomer, who heads up the pro-fair trade campaign for Oxfam, in a press release, which continues: "the slim progress achieved on certain aspects of agricultural negotiations are more than cancelled out by the extremely harmful proposals on services and industry". As for the development package, "this has shrunk away, leaving nothing more than empty promises on aid for trade and a scaled-down proposal on access without quotas or customs duty, which allows the rich countries to exclude certain products which are vital for the living conditions of millions of poor people", he adds. In a report published last Wednesday, Oxfam criticises "the double language of the Union and the United States" at the Hong Kong conference, which was "a missed opportunity to make world trade rules fairer", said the Director-General of the NGO, Jeremy Hobbs. This point of view is shared by a great many NGOs, some thousand of which fulfilled the conditions required to be able to attend the ministerial meeting. In the view of agricultural Unionist and French leader of the alter-globalist movement José Bové, the WTO has arrived at "a very poor agreement". "The DCs are constantly being strangled. They came under enormous pressure to sign", he said, going on to say that: "the developed countries have made concessions adding up to a total mediocrity". In the view of NGO ActionAid, the compromise on the development package left quote which provides for the rich countries to grant the LDCs access to their market with neither customs duty nor quotas for at least 97% of their products) means that the remaining 3% will allow the United States and Japan to block some 400 products on their borders. "In practice, the rich countries will still be able to avoid opening up their market to the products which really count for the poor countries", which are textiles, leather or certain agricultural products in particular, the NGO states. Furthermore, "the developing world has been forced to swallow the bitter pill of a radical opening-up of their services sector", stresses ActionAid, which believes that within the distribution sector, the American and French giants, Wal-Mart and Carrefour respectively, will be the main winners.