MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Agriculture tops the agenda.

Liberalization of agriculture commerce and a review of dumping regulations figure as Chile's priorities for the coming World Trade Organization, WTO, meeting to be held in Qatar beginning November 9th.

Chile together with other agricultural nations from the Cairns Group (includes New Zeland, Australia and Mercosur among others) will demand an elimination of production and export subsidies. Support for agriculture gobbles 60% of the European Union budget, and the US Congress has just passed a bill with an annual 40 billion US dollars support system for American farmers, that will extend for ten years. Another area to discuss is the so called "crest tariffs" which involves certain commodities with tariffs as high as 400%.

"What we're after is not a subsidies war that developing countries will naturally loose since they don't have the sufficient resources, but we can attempt is to limit subsidies", said Chilean International Trade representative Ricardo Lagos Weber.

Chile also pretends more transparent WTO anti dumpling legislation, with more fair conditions for those companies that are not involved in this practice. US is contrary to major modifications to current legislation.