Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim on Monday described the first day of meetings aimed at nailing down a global trade deal as “totally useless” due to the absence of new ideas.
“Maybe it was a necessary meeting, maybe we have to go through that, but it was actually totally useless from my point of view, because I did not hear any new ideas, any new suggestion,” he told reporters.
“Let’s wait for tomorrow [Tuesday],” he added, after a day of meetings at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva, where ministers from 35 key nations are meeting this week in a bid for a global deal on the so-called Doha Development Round.
Amorim had particularly harsh words for the European Union’s chief negotiator, Peter Mandelson, who said that the bloc had raised its proposed tariff cuts on agricultural products to 60% from 54%.
“This is meaningless, this is purely statistic gimmickry,” the Brazilian minister said.
“We are absolutely at the same place as we were before the meeting.”
Other developing countries such as India and Indonesia had also poured cold water on Mandelson’s proposals and even his fellow EU Commissioner, Mariann Fischer-Boel, who holds the agriculture dossier, said: “It’s nothing new.”
French Trade Minister Anne-Marie Idrac said: “Was there new progress, new percentages? The answer is no. Peter Mandelson this morning [Monday] had clarified… what technical discussions have come up with — nothing more, nothing less.”
The French minister said the difference between Mandelson’s two figures was whether tropical products were included in the tariff cut calculations or not.
Mandelson himself described the 60% proposal as a “reiteration” of the EU’s position.
“The more we clarify, the clearer it becomes exactly what we are offering in this round,” he told journalists.
“What we need to see though is what’s coming back. Until we see what’s coming back we won’t be able to establish the balance that we need in this round,” he said.
“That’s what’s lacking at the moment and that’s what we need to work on this week.”
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab was more positive about the first day of meetings, saying that there were “interesting indications” at the sessions.
“Some countries really started to talk about what they can do — focusing on what they can do rather than what they can’t do,” she said.
The Doha round of negotiations was launched with great fanfare in the Qatari capital in November 2001 but has been deadlocked, with brinkmanship between developed and developing countries over concessions on issues such as agricultural subsidies and tariffs on industrial goods. — AFP