Talks on trade negotiations at Cancun finally collapsed today after nearly 100 of the 146 countries participating in this WTO round refused to play ball with developed countries to include discussions on the vexed Singapore issues. These deal with free foreign direct investment, competition, trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement. The issue of agriculture which had split the world—developed countries and the poor and developing countries—did not get enough time for discussion on the final day of the WTO ministerial conference. Not as good as it gets but Delhi has reason to breathe easy What India could have got • Commitment from EU and US to slash their domestic and export subsidies • Special protection of tariffs for agri products of interest to India • Removal of foreign investment, competition from the agenda of WTO • Removal of the proposal of only a 0 to 5 per cent of farm products What it got • A presence in every single meeting of world leaders to break the deadlock * Taking issue of farm subsidies into the US and EU camps • Forming alliances with 22 developing countries on agriculture issues • Forming alliances with 16 nations on Singapore issue This is the second time in four years that world trade talks have collapsed, the last time was at Seattle in 1999. But there was high drama before the talks broke down. The draft ministerial declaration which was to form the basis of negotiations was heavily loaded in favour of developed countries and developing countries were opposed to the proposals. The alliances on agriculture consisting of 21 countries led by India, Brazil, China, Argentina and South Africa rallied together to oppose the draft. Following this, the group of 16 countries opposed to the Singapore issues also decided to slug it out in the marathon session of discussions in what is called the ‘‘Green Room.’’ The talks which went on till the early hours of the morning and then resumed after a few hours failed to find any common ground. Finally, EU Trade Commissioner blinked and is learnt to have offered to give up three of the four Singapore issues. The acceptance of ‘‘trade facilitation’’ by EU was the final offer that was made. In return, EU was prepared to address cuts in domestic and export subsidies and make an allowance for kinder tariff cuts on agri products of special interest to India. Just as the negotiations were entering a crucial stage, nearly 80 countries from the African Union, CarribCom, and the Africa Carribean Pacific and least developed countries led by Bangladesh informed the chairman of WTO at Luis Ernesto Derbez that they were not prepared to discuss any of the issues on the Singapore list. This led the chairman to declare the talks as inconclusive and call off the summit. Soon after, the blame game began with the US Trade Representative saying that there were two types of countries ‘‘that can do and won’t do.’’ Director General of WTO Supachai Panithpakdi said that he was disapponinted but not discouraged. Said Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley: ‘‘I would have liked to go back home with a positive draft. But no draft is better than a bad draft which did not address the problem of developing countries.’’ Jaitley said that India had succeeded in taking the entire debate on trade distortions due to EU and US subsidies to the camp of those who were negotiating. The minister said he was happy that the good work started by Murasoli Maran gave India an opportunity to play a crucial role in the talks. ‘‘At least from now on, India will be among the prominent nations involved in the negotiations at WTO,’’ he said. Jaitley said that while there was no reason to blame anybody for the failure at Cancun, the imbalanced draft which did not even recognise letters written by 69 countries opposing Singapore issues and ignoring the entire gamuts of agriculture issues which was responsible for the collapse of the talks.
