MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New World Trade Organisation Round.

In a quick visit to Argentina and Uruguay Mike Moore, chairman of the World Trade Organisation urged a new trade round for the coming year and anticipated that agriculture will be in the negotiation table.

"In the capitals of the powerful countries everybody knows that no new trade round will begin, and none will end, until agriculture in considered as Uruguay and other countries are demanding", said Mr. Moore during a conference in Montevideo.

However the WTO chairman pointed out that agriculture was not the only priority, "we have the needs of the food importing countries and of those who export, and it's not always easy to implement complex issues rapidly".

Mr. Moore also indicated that the WTO works on consensus and warned that the longer the delay, "greater the risks for the multilateral system. But this depends on world leaders and governments, so trade is in the hand of governments and the WTO does not infringe in countries sovereignties".

Present at the conference was acting Uruguayan president Luis Hierro who in a brief introduction asked WTO to promote a more "fair" and less "arbitrary" world trade, with better opportunities for agricultural countries such as the Cairns Group.

Acting President Hierro revealed that during 1999, rich countries supported farming with 360 billion US dollars, "and we all know that behind a subsidy lies an inefficiency; so we demand from the rich countries the same efficiency criteria in farming as they pretend to impose in the rest of the world for all kinds of production". Finally Mr. Hierro said that the solution of trade disputes is nowadays the essence of the life of nations.

WTO chairman admitted that in the short term some people suffer from globalisation and the opening of economies but in the "long term everybody benefits".