WTO talks brought back from brink
GENEVA (Reuters) - Talks to rescue a world trade deal werebrought back on Tuesday from the brink of collapse overmeasures intended to help poor countries protect their farmers,but they remained at high risk.
Developing countries like China and India are atloggerheads with food exporters like the United States over theissue of safeguards against food import surges, and differenceson several other fundamental parts of a deal are alsounresolved.
Ministers said they would try to find ways out of theimpasse as talks entered their ninth day -- the longest everWTO ministerial-level meeting, trade officials said -- butwarned failure was a real possibility.
"If people don't want this deal, there's no better dealcoming along and we just have to consider, if this fails, whatthey will lose," European Union Trade Commissioner PeterMandelson told reporters on his way into the negotiations.
The talks aimed at salvaging the seven-year-old Doha traderound had been "a minute away" from being called off in theearly hours of Tuesday over safeguards, one trade officialsaid.
But a new effort was then launched to find a compromise.
The negotiations for a global deal trade to lower exportbarriers began in 2001, shortly after the September 11 attackson the United States, in the hope of boosting the world economyand helping poor countries.
They have lurched from crisis to crisis since then and riskfurther years of delay without a breakthrough now because ofthe U.S. presidential elections and changeover and otherfactors.
Negotiators from the United States, China and India weredigging in their heels on the details of a "special safeguardmechanism" against import surges in food products such as rice.
The proposal also pits developing farm exporters likeParaguay and Uruguay against other poor nations who are worriedabout their farmers' survival, especially in Asia.
"A PRICE AS HIGH AS HEAVEN"
China, the world's new export powerhouse, participating ina WTO negotiating round for the first time, accused the UnitedStates of making excessive demands on developing countries.
"The crux of the current serious difficulties that havearisen in the Doha round negotiations is that, having protectedits own interests, the United States is asking a price as highas heaven," Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese Commerce MinisterChen Deming as saying late on Monday.
Adding to concerns that painstakingly assembled compromisesthat rescued the negotiations last week could disintegrate,nine EU states -- a third of the total and including EUheavyweight France -- demanded better terms for the bloc onMonday.
France has warned that a final deal based on the currentproposals might be rejected next year by European capitals.
French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said India wasseeking to protect its agriculture while the United Stateswanted new markets for its crops, notably cotton.
"And we in France and Europe say: 'Stop, we can't just openthe floodgates and leave the next 14 years to the Chinese toprepare themselves as if they were an emerging country',"Lagarde told France Info radio.
Top trade officials from around 30 key WTO members havebeen in Geneva since last Monday to try to agree on a range ofterms for cutting farm subsidies and tariffs on agriculturaland manufactured goods, the core of the WTO's Doha round.
(Additional reporting by Doug Palmer and by James Mackenziein Paris; Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by CatherineEvans)