Riots threat grows as WTO stalls on tariff reform Nick Mathiason Sunday September 7, 2003 The Observer
Hopes for any significant breakthrough at the World Trade Organisation talks, starting this week, have been dealt a severe blow as it emerges that plans are already in place for an unscheduled ministerial trade meeting early next year. This new meeting has been discussed as fears grow among trade negotiators that agreement will not be reached on vital issues such as agricultural tariff reduction by Europe and America. The news will provoke fury from the thousands of protesters gathering in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun this weekend and could spark a repeat of the riots that brought similar talks in the American city of Seattle to a chaotic close. The talks look to be head ing for crisis following a ferocious attack on poor countries by the European Commission in which proposals by 20 developing nations were labelled as 'cheap propaganda'. Digby Jones, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, attacked the European Union's reluctance to move faster on tariff reform. 'We are urging Europe to table a more significant offer on agriculture,' he said. 'It needs to move or the talks will collapse.' Steve Tibbett, director of policy and campaigns at War on Want said: 'The EU and US consistently refuse to give an inch to developing countries and manipulate negotiations to extract ever greater concessions from the world's poorest nations.' It now appears that some measures to open developing countries' economies to multi- nationals will have to dropped. Two of the four so-called Singapore issues on investment and competition are likely to be mothballed. A new alliance of China, India and Brazil is expected to hold out for meaningful reform at what is the fifth WTO ministerial. Delegates, including Trade Ministers from 146 countries, will face thousands of Mexican farmworkers among a wave of colourful protesters.
