MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

South America Breaking News.

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.

Chile links with New Zeland and Singapore

Chile will be holding talks in Qatar with New Zeland and Singapore representatives for the creation of a triangular free trade area.

Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Heraldo Muñoz indicated this week in Santiago that "Qatar is a good opportunity to advance a project that has been under consideration for several months; we're very much interested in complementing trade with new Zeland and Singapore".

Mr. Muñoz said he also has meetings scheduled with the United Kingdom representative involving free trade talks with the European Union and with US Trade Representative Mr. Zoellick regarding a bilateral agreement.

"Emergency aid"

The Interamerican Development Bank, IDB, is assessing the "devastating impact" for Latinamerica of the September 11 attacks and is planning a package of "emergency aid" to address the situation.

"Latinamerica faces one of the most adverse moments in decades with the risk of wiping out all the struct