Agreement on Key Issues Eludes Trade Ministers

The summit of the World Trade Organization headed toward its finale Thursday amid growing fears of an impasse that would prove deeply embarrassing to U.S. officials.

In sharp contrast to the previous days, Thursday’s focus of conflict shifted from the streets to the meeting halls, where U.S. negotiators struggled to prevent their summit from turning into even more of a fiasco.

Angry delegates complained of being shut out of key deliberations, and a proposal by President Clinton to add tough workplace standards as a condition of trade sparked a furious backlash from emerging nations.

“There’s a lot to do, and we have very little time to do it,” warned European Union trade minister Pascal Lamy at one point. “That’s, I think, the basic message.”

Outside, police began to ease their state of emergency, which had been prompted by wild protests that had engulfed the summit in chaos earlier this week.

A curfew around the convention center remained in effect, however, and nearby street corners resembled military checkpoints, manned by police who let pass only those with official WTO credentials.

While U.S. officials had long awaited the Seattle summit as a triumphant moment to shape the global economy along free-market lines, it has turned into a diplomatic donnybrook in which images of civil unrest were broadcast around the world.

The overwhelming pressures to arrive at a face-saving conclusion were increasingly evident Thursday. A tense U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky summoned key trade ministers into an emergency meeting and later vowed she would “get a draft text by whatever means,” according to several delegates in that meeting.

Later in the day, she insisted that “quite significant progress” had been made in several areas, although key agreements remained elusive late Thursday.

For their part, delegates from more than 135 nations--many still disconcerted by the week’s scenes of tear gas and window-breaking right outside their hotels--later said they were offended at what they saw as arrogant U.S. tactics.

Members of the WTO’s 71-member developing-country group accused the WTO and the United States of giving lip service to the idea of opening up the WTO process, while the real horse-trading was being done through a secretive process dubbed the “green room.”

Guyana Foreign Minister Clement Rohee declared angrily that he and others in the Third World would not support an agreement drawn up by an exclusive club that did not represent the interests of the world’s poorest countries.

“We have to go back to our country and explain why we did this,” said the unhappy South American minister after the meeting broke for lunch.

The U.S., EU and other key WTO supporters convened emergency meetings, corridor chats and telephone consultations at the heavily guarded convention center and nearby hotels to push the cumbersome and increasingly irritable trade group closer to an agreement.

While the WTO’s most powerful members resisted giving ground on their most politically sensitive topics--such as agricultural subsidies in Europe, anti-dumping laws demanded by U.S. officials to shelter domestic industries from import surges, and forest products tariffs in Japan--developing countries vowed to torpedo the talks unless they get a bigger share of the pie.

Their priorities include special provisions for developing countries, such as longer implementation times for the removal of tariffs or quotas and increased access to lucrative markets of the U.S. and Europe.

“This is a sham,” said an angry WTO Third World delegate who did not want his name used. “We are just like the environmentalists. We are frozen out of the process.”

The U.S. desire to spotlight labor concerns--a matter that has become tangled up in presidential politics and next year’s election--continued as perhaps the most controversial item on the U.S. agenda here because developing nations are bitterly opposed.

Before leaving town, President Clinton signed the U.N. Child Labor Convention, an international treaty that seeks to ban the worst forms of child labor.

“This is a victory for the children of the world, and especially for the tens of millions of them who are still forced to work in conditions that shock the conscience and haunt the soul,” Clinton said before heading off to Philadelphia.

The U.S. position on labor issues prompted charges of hypocrisy, however, because this country itself has been a laggard in endorsing other international codes for labor.

For example, the U.N. International Labor Organization has eight core conventions that address issues of forced labor, collective bargaining and equal pay for men and women. The U.S. has ratified only two of those, including the newly signed child labor prohibition.

Given the resistance of developing countries to labor standards being included in the WTO, the U.S. has indicated it might support a proposal by the EU and Japan for the WTO to join other international organizations in studying the labor standards issues.

A top British negotiator said he remained confident the WTO could close the deepening rift between the haves and have-nots, pointing to growing support for a compromise plan offered by a group of countries including the EU nations, Japan and South Korea. They proposed accelerated quota removal for textiles and apparel and restrictions on the use of anti-dumping laws.

When asked if the strong U.S. resistance to those measures was weakening, the weary delegate said: “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Meanwhile, the EU has agreed to support setting up a working committee on biotechnology in the WTO, which would address the highly controversial issue of genetically modified foods, which are widely produced in the United States but restricted in Europe.

The EU and Japan have apparently agreed to support the removal of tariffs on products from the poorest countries, including Bangladesh and many nations in Africa and the Caribbean Basin, but the U.S. reportedly had not completely signed off on that measure.

Earlier in his visit to Seattle, Clinton also urged the WTO to open up its decision-making process and address concerns about the environment and labor conditions around the world. The president also announced an initiative that would make it easier for poor regions such as Africa to purchase AZT and other AIDS drugs.

After Clinton left town, Barshefsky and White House economic aide Gene Sperling had to clarify to unhappy delegates that, while the president had called for ways to penalize nations that commit labor abuses, this demand was not part of the U.S. negotiating position.

“I don’t think we’re in a damage-control situation at all,” Barshefsky maintained, insisting that the U.S. proposal was to study the labor issue.

On the key issue of agriculture, U.S. trade officials maintained they were making progress toward a compromise with the EU, which has jousted with this country for years over its lavish export subsidies to farmers. Officials hinted that there might be some give in Europe’s long-held position, perhaps by establishing that such subsidies might be phased out in the long run.

“We view this as progress,” said Dan Glickman, the U.S. agriculture secretary, adding: “The question is at what pace, and how it’s done.”

While major roadblocks remain, progress has been made in some less controversial areas, such as support for a moratorium on taxes on e-commerce.

Outside the heavily guarded conference center, consumer advocate Ralph Nader; Jim Hightower, a Texas farm advocate; and several WTO critics held rallies around the city to keep the heat on the WTO, which they see as advocating an agenda of corporate greed at the expense of other social concerns.

“Seattle is only the beginning,” said Hightower, who spoke to 3,000 people at a rally next to Seattle’s famous open-air Pike Place Market. “What we’ve done here this week is open a great big old can of whoop-ass.”

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Times staff writer Robin Wright of the Washington bureau, staff writer Edwin Chen in Philadelphia and staff writer Terry McDermott in Seattle contributed to this story.