Brussels, 08/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - Following in the wake of US Trade Representative Susan Schwab on Thursday (see EUROPE 9517), EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson also increased pressure, on Friday 5 October, on the leaders of the G20 group of emerging economies - South Africa, Brazil and India - to back the Falconer-Stephenson compromise texts as the basis for negotiations in the Doha Trade Round at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over agriculture and industrial products (NAMAS). 'It is essential that everyone accepts the texts as the basis for negotiations. The fact that there are texts on the table allows us to focus on the key issues. However, all players have to play equally into this process. In particular, a number of developing countries must signal that they accept the specific content of the texts, both in agriculture and in industry. The EU, the US and APEC nations have done so. India, South Africa and Brazil can send such a message at their summit on the 17th October,' explained Mandelson. The eagerly awaited summit in Pretoria, South Africa, on 17 October will be attended by the pPresident of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, and the prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh.
According to the statements by South African, Brazilian and Indian diplomats at the WTO headquarters in Geneva, however, it is hard to say exactly how many of the 150 WTO member states are actually close to reaching a compromise on agriculture - the main stumbling block of the Doha negotiations and an area of great political sensitivity for both the G20 and developed countries alike. This is no doubt clearest in India where a farm agreement could make the lives of hundreds of millions of people who eke out an existence from subsistence farming even more precarious. 'All these factors only strengthen our resolve to ensure that agriculture in developing countries is treated differently,' explained Ujal Singh Bhatia, India's ambassador to the WTO, speaking on the fringes of a WTO public forum last Friday. This explains why India is so insistent on the need to introduce special safeguards into the farm compromise deal for special products and special safeguard mechanisms to protect food security, standards of living and promotion of rural development. These safeguards have been slammed by the United States as 'loopholes' to allow emerging economies to wriggle out of some or all concessions being demanded of them by rich countries in terms of access to farm markets. It also explains why South Africa, Brazil and India all want assurances that the EU and, more especially, the United States, will slash their domestic farm support. Brazil's ambassador to the WTO, Paolo Estivallet de Mesquita, explained: 'For us, the question of fairness in agriculture is fundamental.'
Against this backdrop, it is hard to imagine that South Africa, Brazil and India would agree to a compromise on NAMAS that required greater concessions from them in terms of access to the market for industrial goods, unless they get assurances of a balanced compromise in farming. A compromise that still seems out of the grasp of the 150 WTO member states, although the outlines of a potential overall deal seem to be coming into focus. (eh)