MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Growing rift among developing countries on global trade talks

Developing countries are deeply divided about how to advance on global trade talks and few ministers will attend a meeting this week meant to show their unity.

steps for the six-year-old Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks, which are mired in tensions between rich and poor countries particularly regarding agriculture. Ministers from India, South Africa, Indonesia, Paraguay, Tanzania, Uruguay, along with vice-ministers from Cuba and Ecuador, will participate, but most members of the Group of 20 or "G20" developing-power negotiating block are not sending ministers to the session. The meeting is to be hosted by Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim. The absence of key players including Mexico, Chile and Peru reflects a growing rift among developing powers in the talks, particularly over the extent to which industrial goods markets should be opened to more competition. Several negotiators said the disparate viewpoints in the talks, where diplomats have struggled to agree on even minor issues, meant little may be achieved in this Thursday's forum. Though poorer nations have mainly stood together in agriculture talks, calling on rich nations to cut price-distorting subsidies and tariffs, they have been at odds in parallel negotiations over manufacturing. Canadian WTO ambassador Don Stephenson, who chairs the industrial goods talks, said last week that several weeks of intensive talks yielded "little progress on all fronts". Many developing countries want the right to shield more of their sensitive markets from drastic cuts in a Doha accord, which requires consensus to be clinched among the WTO 151 member states. Both Stephenson and his counterpart in agricultural goods, New Zealand ambassador Crawford Falconer, have said that ministers would need to intervene for any substantive breakthrough in the negotiations to occur soon. No high-level meeting has been scheduled to accomplish this, despite a push from WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy to wrap up the bulk of a Doha deal in 2007, before the US presidential election makes it hard for Washington to negotiate.