South African President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday urged developing countries to unite to protect their interests at the upcoming World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting at Cancun in Mexico.
”What we have to do is to ensure that we, as developing countries speak with one voice,” Mbeki told a forum organised by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur.
”There are major difficulties on the matter of agricultural subsidies. The fear is that Cancun will fail on this issue.”
Mbeki, who was on a three-day visit to Malaysia, agreed with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Tuesday to work together to promote the interests of developing countries at the Cancun meeting, which begins on September 10.
The South African leader handed over the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement of developing nations to Mahathir, a strong critic of globalisation and Western trade practices, at a summit in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year.
”Malaysia plays a very important role with regards to leadership of developing countries,” Mbeki said.
The WTO meeting is shaping up as the stage for a heated battle, with developing countries arguing that the billions of dollars spent each year by industrialised nations to help their domestic food producers prevent fair competition.
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo told a high-level regional business forum in neighbouring Brunei Wednesday: ”A major test for the success of the WTO negotiations is how they will fulfill the promise to open global markets for the products in which the developing countries have an advantage.
”This means breaking down and dissolving barriers to those products –barriers such as quotas, health and sanitary regulations, technical obstacles and other clever tricks that developed countries use to beat down the competition from developing countries.
”Not least among these clever tricks are the massive subsidies given to developed country agriculture with which, as a result, poor countries cannot hope to compete.”
Mbeki later told a business luncheon organised by the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute he was confident that economic cooperation between the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the African Union would be established soon.
”We are going to be starting negotiations between African Union and ASEAN, we want to increase economic cooperation,” he said.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Mbeki, accompanied by his wife and a 70-member delegation, arrived in Malaysia on Monday and was due to leave for home in the early hours of Thursday morning. — Sapa-AFP