A deal at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Hong Kong was a distinctly modest achievement which kept the Doha round of trade talks ”on life support”, although this was better than nothing, British newspapers said on Monday.
”World trade accords are like sausage. It’s sensible not to look too closely at how they are made,” The Times noted in its editorial.
”This has been especially true of the marathon negotiations conducted in Hong Kong which have concluded with an outline agreement,” it said.
”The final text could and should have been more imaginative and far-reaching. It is, however, better not to make the best the enemy of the good.”
Ministers at the crunch WTO talks made some progress on maintaining the Doha Round of trade negotiations, launched in Qatar in 2001, by agreeing a compromise deal.
The document provides for European Union agricultural export subsidies to be scrapped by 2013, a key stumbling block which the United States and developing nations had wanted removed in 2010.
”Modest agreements that kept failure at bay,” was the editorial headline verdict in The Independent.
”This is testimony to the recognition by all concerned that joint action, however timid, is better than strife,” the paper argued.
”This may be a modest achievement, but it’s an achievement nonetheless.”
Nonetheless, the Doha round remained ”on life support”, the Financial Times said.
”The Doha round is still breathing but only just. The ministers have kept it on life support. But negotiators will have to resuscitate early in the new year,” it said in its editorial.
”The relatively small number of countries with markets worth accessing must be far more forthcoming,” the business paper argued.
”They include big developing countries, such as China, India, and Brazil. China at least has made substantial commitments when it joined the WTO. Others have much left to offer. They will have to make substantial offers in services and manufactures.”
”Protection-free markets for the least developed are the least they deserve,” the paper added, calling it ”a scandal” that the United States Congress was resisting this.
Meanwhile, more than 800 anti-WTO protesters — mostly South Korean farmers — remained in detention on Monday after police rounded them up a day earlier for going on a violent rampage outside a meeting of the World Trade Organisation.
South Korea’s vice foreign minister, Lee Kyu-hyung, was on his way to Hong Kong to help secure the release of the farmers and activists.
”He is going to first offer regret that the protests turned violent,” said Lee Young-ho, director of the ministry’s consular affairs bureau. ”But he is also expected to stress that it isn’t desirable to punish [the protesters] with prison terms.”
Saturday’s rioting marked one of the worst episodes of violence in Hong Kong in decades, injuring 175 people, including 64 police officers.
The militant protesters — many South Koreans — attacked police with bamboo poles and tried to break into the meeting venue where trade ministers around the world wrapped up six days of negotiations. They opposed the WTO’s efforts to open up markets to foreign competition.
Security forces later fired tear gas to disperse the crowds and seized control of the area.
On Sunday, police arrested more than 1 000 protesters who held a sit-in and blocked off a major thoroughfare following the violent protest.
The authorities later released 188 people, including 150 South Korean women.
Police spokesperson Carrie So said on Monday she had no information on how many of those still in detention would be formally charged.
Some South Korean activists have accused police of strip-searching some who were arrested and beating those who refused to have their hands bound. But police insisted the suspects received humane treatment.
Most of the injured people were discharged from hospitals after treatment, but one 45-year-old Korean man remained hospitalised on Monday in a serious condition.
Large-scale violence is rare in Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The last time the city saw such a street battle was during 1967 riots aimed at usurping British colonial rule. – Sapa-AP