UNITED NATIONS-Caribbean pleads case for better deal in stalled trade talks

The pleas have found favour with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who this week urged the world's richest nations to refocus international trade talks in the interest of poor countries.

Using the forum of the just-concluded 61st Session of the UN General Assembly to launch their campaign, leaders, foreign ministers and diplomats vented their anger and frustration, while making their fervent plea to the world's richest countries to consider their plight.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines' Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said it was apparent that most of the world's rich and powerful countries are demonstrating "signs of fatigue and disengagement" towards developing countries, pointing out that developed countries have failed in advancing the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations.

"Better must be done," Gonsalves asserted, noting that his broadside was leveled at the governments of these countries and not their people or their civilizations.
"Sufficient persuasive evidence exists, which shows that people in many, if not most, of these rich countries are sensitive to the concerns of the developing world but their governments do not sufficiently reflect these sensitivities despite their occasional rhetoric to the contrary," he said.

Barbados' Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Dame Billie Miller said the failure of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks to achieve agreement on new commitments for trade reform in the agricultural and industrial goods sectors represents a "very real crisis" in international trade negotiations.

But Dame Billie said if there is to be a successful outcome to the trade negotiations, narrow focus on trade liberalisation and enhanced market access alone would be inadequate.

"For while it is important to have agreements that open up access to markets, it is even more essential for any negotiated trade agreement to contain provisions that would assist developing countries to implement policies aimed at transforming their economies," she said.

In comments this week, Annan urged wealthy countries to "go the extra mile" to rebalance the rules of the trading system in favour of the world's poor and push ahead speedily with the Doha Round.
"Our countries, and our people, need and deserve no less in order to lift themselves out of poverty," Annan said in a message to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Public Forum in Geneva.

He said setbacks in the Doha talks "have led some to consider settling for something less than a true development round - or for no round at all. That must not happen."

Jamaica's Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Anthony Hylton said while there was "a welcome increase" in Official Developmental Assistance (ODA), from US$69 million in 2003 to US$106 million in 2005, there was little new money for investment in development projects, even in the poorest countries.

"It was always recognised that much of the resources for financing development must come from trade," he said, stating that stalemate and a breakdown in the DOHA Round have replaced "expedition and facilitation."

At the same time, St. Lucia's External Affairs and International Trade Minister Petrus Compton said that a new set of trading rules are needed to take into account the concerns of developing states like his.

"The principle of 'special and differential treatment' must infuse all aspects of the new trade rules, which we are seeking to create," he said, pointing out that these rulings have, primarily, adversely affected access of banana exports to preferential markets.

Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Supachi Panitchpakdi said this week that it was critical that developed countries open up their markets to agricultural and other exports from the world's poorest states.

"The suspension of the talks hurts the world's poorest most acutely," he told the organisation's governing body in Geneva, adding that the talks that have been in limbo for months, primarily because wealthy nations give subsidies to their agricultural industries, tariffs and quotas, which developing countries, like those in the region, say shut them out of the market.