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Agriculture deadline missed, "technical work" to go on
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The Special Session of the WTO Committee on Agriculture, where the agriculture negotiations are taking place, at a formal session on 31 March acknowledged that the 31 March deadline for settling the modalities has been missed, but that "technical work" will continue. Further meetings of the Agriculture Committee (Special Sessions) are scheduled for June and July.
In a statement after the meeting, the WTO Director-General Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi expressed disappointment over the failure to agree on a framework for further negotiations, but said negotiators must redouble efforts in agriculture and all other areas between now and the 5th Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Cancun in September, and ensure that the entire Doha-mandated negotiations are completed by the 1 January 2005 deadline. He also mentioned the need for maintaining the momentum in the other areas of negotiations (besides agriculture), "such as services, industrial tariff reductions, trade and environment and reforming WTO rules". Interestingly, the three other deadlines that have thus far been missed (on implementation, special and differential treatment, and TRIPS and public health) did not figure in the statement issued by him.
The chair of the Special Sessions and chef de cabinet to Supachai, Stuart Harbinson, told a press conference after the meeting that with everyone reiterating their commitments to the Doha agenda and remaining engaged, he hoped enough progress could be made on the modalities, such that only a few key questions, and not the whole issue, would be left to be dealt with by the ministers at Cancun. Harbinson however conceded that with the missed deadline on the modalities, it would be more difficult for WTO members to keep to the other agriculture deadline, namely, for participants to submit, no later than the date of the 5th Ministerial, their "comprehensive draft schedules" of commitments based on the modalities.
Read more…
Agriculture in the WTO: after the chairman's text
The Chairman's text does not address the basic issues in trade in agriculture, nor does it take into account the problems facing developing countries in this area, although it touches upon some of them in a superficial and ineffectual manner, as Bhagirath Lal Das explains.
Modalities phase: revised first draft
This is the revised first draft of the “modalities” paper, circulated to member governments on 18 March 2003, ahead of the 25–31 March negotiations meetings. It is an evolution of the original, based on the discussions at the 24-28 February negotiations meeting.
Harbinson agri-modalities paper may complicate negotiations
By preserving existing inequities and introducing new ones in the scheme of rules governing agriculture trade, draft modalities for WTO agriculture negotiations proposed by the chair of the talks will likely bring no reprieve for struggling Third World farmers exposed to the ruthless vagaries of the commodity markets. By Chakravarthi Raghavan.
NGOs call for rejection of Harbinson paper
Over 50 non-governmental organizations (church and development groups) from around the world have called for the rejection of the latest Agriculture Draft modalities paper presented to the Special Sessions of the WTO Committee on Agriculture by Chairman Stuart Harbinson.
Agriculture: the current negotiations at the WTO
WTO members agreed to initiate negotiations for continuing the agricultural trade reform process one year before the end of the implementation period, i.e. by the end of 1999. These talks began in early 2000 under the original mandate of Article 20 of the Agriculture Agreement. At the November 2001 Doha Ministerial Conference, the agriculture negotiations became part of the single undertaking in which virtually all the linked negotiations are to end by 1 January 2005.
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