India, Other Nations Threaten to Block New Trade Talk Round

A dissident group of developing nations led by India threatened Saturday to block a proposed new round of international trade talks unless its members receive concessions on existing accords to help them out of dire economic straits caused by globalization.

India threw down the gauntlet at the end of a two-day meeting here attended by trade representatives from 18 countries. The gathering was an attempt to smooth some of the outstanding issues that have thwarted Western efforts to launch a new round of trade talks at a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization to be held in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar in November.

Boosters of a new trade round, led by U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick and European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, have organized meetings in coming weeks in hopes of salvaging a new round in the face of growing resistance. They are anxious to avoid a repeat of the last WTO ministerial meeting, in Seattle in late 1999, when talks collapsed because of resistance from developing nations and violent protests by foes of globalization.

The resistance of India and 11 other countries also reflects the concerns of a number of lesser developed nations that say they were ill prepared for the new global playing field created by the last round of trade talks in 1994, the so-called Uruguay Round. They say they want revisions to those agreements that will protect their hard-hit domestic producers and give them greater access to markets in the developed world.

Indian trade negotiator Thira Maram told reporters after the meeting Saturday that India wants 93 outstanding issues resolved in its favor. Those include quicker access to U.S. and European markets for its textiles and extra protection for its farmers.

“India has special problems, so special and deferential treatment should be extended to it,” he said.

India is rallying other disgruntled nations, including the group of “like-minded” countries that believe that the existing rules of free trade stack the cards against them. Those nations--which include Pakistan, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Tanzania, Honduras, Cuba and Egypt--are meeting next week in Geneva to plot strategy.

Maram’s outspoken comments came after a candid admission Saturday by the EU’s Lamy that “multinational trade is shaky, wavering” after protests against globalization such as those that occurred in Seattle and, in July, in Genoa, Italy. Still, Lamy said the Mexico City talks were open and “breathed fresh air at a crucial time” into the troubled trade negotiations.

While acknowledging the significant barriers, Zoellick was considerably more upbeat about the Qatar talks’ prospects, telling reporters that he was leaving Mexico City with an “added sense of momentum. . . . All the people around the table want [the Qatar talks] to be a success.”

The U.S. trade representative and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman were heading to a meeting in Uruguay this week on global agriculture, one of the contentious issues WTO supporters hope to address. Farm subsidies, the environment and bidding for government services are among other issues that are supposed to be part of a new trade round.

Time is running out on the new round’s boosters to set an agenda for the Qatar talks, said Bruce Stokes, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

“There has to be a fish-or-cut-bait moment,” Stokes said. “If the U.S. and the EU want to make this happen, they can probably make it happen. That said and done, it’s not clear to me how you basically roll over India.”

Negotiators here said an agenda--and presumably a consensus to proceed--must be arrived at by the third week of this month for the Qatar talks to have any chance of success.

The annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington this month is expected to attract opposition similar to that in Seattle. Demonstrations in Mexico City were held at scattered locations under tight security.

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Kraul reported from Mexico City and Iritani from Los Angeles.