WTO Talks Deadlock as Industrialized, Developing Nations Face Off on Issues

Half a dozen high-level mediators failed Sunday to resolve the central disputes blocking progress at a global trade conference, causing concern the talks could collapse much like they did two years ago in Seattle.

As the World Trade Organization passed the halfway mark of its five-day conference schedule, at least one thing went according to plan: Taiwan was invited to join, exactly a day after the same offer was extended to China.

WTO officials acknowledged that six “friends of the chair” assigned Saturday to referee standoffs over drug patents, farm subsidies and other trade issues were unable to lead conference participants to common ground.

If anything, it appeared positions might be hardening. Each issue has its own lineup of supporters and opponents, but most tend to pit the United States and other industrialized nations against the poorer developing countries that are about three-fourths of the WTO’s membership.

“We are now at a very critical moment,” said Munir Akram, a leader of Pakistan’s delegation. “Very intensive negotiations will have to be continued over the next 24 or 48 hours if we’re going to reconcile these differences.”

Activists’ Presence Limited by Security

The sense of inertia inside the conference area appeared to energize anti-globalization advocates, who performed a WTO parody portraying trade ministers as marionettes whose strings were pulled by business interests.

Only a few hundred activists made it to Qatar, a far cry from the tens of thousands who took to the streets in Seattle, Quebec City and Genoa, Italy. Their ability to mobilize has been restricted by the tight security arrangements, intensified by the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

The WTO’s 142 member nations, a group that will grow to 144 after China and Taiwan ratify their memberships, are gathered in Qatar to consider launching several years of negotiations on a sweeping trade liberalization agreement.

The objective in Doha is simply to set the initial parameters of the proposed negotiations. But even that task is proving enormously difficult as various coalitions of nations try to ensure that some issues are on the agenda, that others are not, and that the language tilts in the direction they desire.

In Seattle, it was the inability of delegates to agree among themselves on the ground rules of future negotiations, not the violent demonstrations in the streets outside, that caused the last ministerial conference to end in failure, WTO officials said.

Trying to Manage Major Impasses

After whittling down the list of policy disputes during months of pre-conference consultations, WTO Director General Michael Moore announced Saturday that he was appointing six trade ministers to serve as mediators in the biggest unresolved impasses: agricultural subsidies in wealthy nations, enforcement of drug patents in the Third World, the application of environmental standards to trade, the use of antidumping policies to restrict trade, implementation of past commitments such as lowering textile trade barriers, and proposals to expand trade rules to encompass foreign investment, government procurement and antitrust policy.

Although each issue has its own fault lines, a common theme is the complaint by poorer nations that they are still struggling to carry out previous agreements that seemed to deliver most of their benefits to wealthy nations. Many developing countries are leery of launching another round of trade liberalization talks, which might require them to comply with labor, environmental and financial standards they are not prepared to embrace.

“For the last three years, we have been working and negotiating very hard, and we have got nothing,” said Cuban delegate Jorge Ivan Mora Godoy. “We are under very, very high pressure.”

Many developing country delegates and their advocates accused the United States and Europe of engaging in arm-twisting tactics to get their way on certain issues and overcome opposition to launching a new round.

“We are aware of the immense pressure being exerted on your countries by the powerful trading nations,” a coalition of nongovernment organizations said in an open letter to developing countries. The pressure tactics include threatened reductions of foreign aid and debt relief, they said.

Antiglobalization activists accused Moore and other WTO officials of replacing one form of patronization with another. Instead of having rooms in which leaders of wealthy nations meet behind closed doors to make all the big decisions, they said Moore has turned the decision-making over to the six men, purportedly to make the process more efficient.

“Dictatorships are very efficient, too,” said Sarah Wright, board member of a Seattle advocacy group called PressurePoint. “But you can’t give up transparency and democracy in the name of efficiency.”

Taiwan Invitation Followed Set Steps

The unanimous invitation extended to Taiwan to join the WTO was carefully choreographed to avoid antagonizing the government of China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province. It came a day after the vote on China’s accession to the organization.

Sunday evening, Chinese officials waited patiently on a stage in another conference room while WTO delegates heralded the significance of the new memberships. As soon as the vote on Taiwan was cast, the Chinese officials signed the accession agreement they had received the night before.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick said Taiwan’s accession was “a proper recognition of the achievements of Taiwan’s people in building one of the world’s strongest, most dynamic economies.”