Some members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are outraged at secret debates among five key players on how to salvage global trade talks, with one delegate warning on Thursday that a price will be paid.
The comment came as Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India and the United States wrapped up two days of closed door talks at midnight on Wednesday and handed their ”guidance” on how to overcome rifts on farm-related stumbling blocks to the WTO’s chief farming negotiator, Tim Groser.
Groser was due to present a revised proposal on agriculture later on Thursday as part of a draft framework for future global trade talks, which must be agreed on by the WTO’s 147 member states by Friday night.
”It is catastrophic,” declared Switzerland’s chief trade negotiator, Luzius Wasescha, referring to the negotiating process at the key WTO meeting.
The so-called Five Interested Parties (FIPs) ”consider themselves to be the leaders of the world and they are not, they are not even able to negotiate properly”, he told a group of reporters outside the WTO’s Geneva headquarters.
Asked to sum up the feeling of member states who were not party to the debate among the five, Wescha said ”total frustration”, describing the rest of the WTO as ”uninterested members as only five are interested”.
He warned that ”the price will come tonight”, declining to be more specific.
Meanwhile, a European trade official argued that the discussions between the five, which represent both the developed and developing world that so often clash during WTO debates, would be ”very helpful” in producing an overall accord.
”We have been trying to work as intensively as possible on the political level and on the technical level,” he said on condition of anonymity.
”We are trying to narrow down the positions. The objective is to give Tim Groser clear and concise guidance where FIPs see a possible avenue towards a compromise,” said the official.
The five powerful delegations realise that a unanimous stance on their side does not pre-empt an overall accord, he noted.
”We are not trying to cook up something in exclusive terms. We are trying to do our best to move things forward,” said the official. ”At the end of the day we all have to say yes to agree.”
Attempts by the five parties to narrow positions on contentious topics such as export subsidies, domestic support and market access for agricultural products will help Groser to produce a more balanced text, he added.
”I think it will help a lot. Will it be good enough? I don’t know.”
Underscoring the frustration felt by other members of the WTO, however, 27 countries — including Switzerland, Japan, China, Chili and Mexico — complained at a meeting of the heads of delegations on Wednesday evening that the big five were slowing down the whole process as they all struggled to reach a consensus ahead of the Friday-night deadline.
”These delegations find it very hard to accept a final text that they don’t feel they have ownership of,” a trade source said.
Wasescha was more blunt.
”It is a scandal that the five most responsible countries are not able to negotiate and leave the decisions to a civil servant,” he said. — Sapa-AFP