European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson warned that there will be no fresh concessions to unblock the logjam in world trade talks on the eve of negotiations poised to set rich countries against poor.
As 6 000 delegates gathered for the start of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) six-day meeting of ministers, Mandelson said a breakthrough is ”impossible” because the gulf between the 150 member states is too wide.
”There’s simply too little on the table to negotiate about in Hong Kong,” he said.
The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is still hopeful that there will be enough progress this week to complete an ambitious trade liberalisation round in the first three months of next year.
It is thought Brazil may offer a small concession on industrial tariffs in order to put pressure on the European Union to give ground on agriculture, which is the main stumbling block to a deal.
But Brazil’s Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, showed no sign on Monday of blinking first.
”Unless the EU is able to improve substantially its offer on agricultural goods, there will not be a successful round,” he told a news conference.
”If rich countries have come here looking for blood, they won’t get it. Too much is at stake for developing countries and they are not in the mood to be bullied into a bad deal, even if that means no deal at all,” said Steve Tibbett, head of policy and campaigns at Action Aid UK.
The conference begins on Tuesday amid tight security as police prepare for a big demonstration by an estimated 10 000 anti-globalisation protesters.
Hong Kong has tried to minimise the risk of disruption by excluding potential troublemakers, but its tactics have been criticised as heavy-handed. A militant French farmer, José Bové, was held at the airport on Monday until the WTO director general, Pascal Lamy, intervened on his behalf.
With major progress unlikely this week, delegates are hoping to put in place ”building blocks” for an agreement early next year. This would include setting parameters for cuts in agriculture and industrial protection and a package of special help for the poorest countries to enable them to build up the capacity to trade.
Mandelson said providing duty-free access to goods from developing nations is the most realistic goal for the conference.
”I think it would earth these negotiations in the real world,” he said. ”It would give them a human face.”
Mandelson praised Japan for taking significant steps in this field, but the Americans are uneasy about the implications for their textile industry. The United States trade representative, Robert Portman, said agriculture remains key. But this puts him at odds with the Europeans, who believe the scope of talks must be widened.
”We cannot avoid the hard choices needed to reach an agreement on agriculture which from the start has been at the heart of the Doha round,” Portman said.
Twice in the past six years, countries in the developing world have walked away from WTO talks rather than accept what they considered to be bad deals from the developed world.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former World Bank chief economist, said the West has not learned the lesson of talks in Seattle and Cancún.
”There’s been a history of bargaining in bad faith,” he said, calling on wealthy countries to drop their ”double standard”.
Developing countries, especially democracies, cannot sign on to trade agreements that are as unfair as those negotiated in the past, he said.
Don McKinnon, secretary general of the Commonwealth, which represents 30% of the world’s population, said wealthy nations should give more ground to poor countries that have repeatedly lost out in previous talks.
”They were promised a lot from this round. So far, not a lot is coming,” he said. — Guardian Unlimited Â