On the Road to Hong

On the Road to Hong Kong

The Trade Ministers of the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) meet every two years. This "Ministerial Conference" is the highest level decision-making body in the WTO.

They met in 1999 in Seattle, in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, and in 2003 in Cancún, Mexico. Their next meeting will take place this December 13-18 in Hong Kong. There is no chance that they will complete the current Doha Round negotiations at this meeting. Their meeting may propel those negotiations into their final phase, with completion in 2006.

Gustavo Capdevila reports that a meeting of ministers from a number of WTO member nations at Davos, Switzerland last week is expected to give Doha Round negotiations a boost ("Davos meet recharges Doha Round of WTO talks", Asia Times Online 2-1-05).

"The World Economic Forum's 2005 meeting will be remembered more for having served as the scenario for the reinvigoration of the Doha Round of trade talks than for the statesmen and celebrities who visited this Swiss mountain resort last week...

Swiss Economy Minister Joseph Deiss, who hosted the ministerial meeting in Davos, said the ministers must go to Hong Kong with "concrete progress" on modalities in agriculture and industrial goods as well as a "critical mass" of progress on services and trade facilitation. The draft agreements, he said, should also include a "proper reflection of the development dimension" - a reference to the assymetries between nations that put developing countries at a disadvantage.

The key issues in the run-up to Hong Kong will be discussed in a new ministerial meeting to take place in Kenya in early March. The ministers stated that the draft texts of the agreements - the "approximation of the kind of modalities we will like to see", in Supachai's words - should be ready by August. If there is no outline of the modalities by then, it will be very difficult to reach an agreement next December, said Alfredo Chiaradía, Argentina's secretary of foreign trade.

Deiss said the negotiators must reduce their differences and that only a few major political questions should be left pending by the time the ministers meet in Hong Kong. "

Gary Duncan and Robert Thomson report on current Director-General Supachai's vision of the road to Hong Kong ("WTO chief sees light at the end of trade talks", TimesOnline 2-1-05):

"In an effort to keep the process on track, Dr Supachai, along with senior negotiators such as Mr Mandelson and his outgoing US counterpart, Robert Zoellick, pinpoint July as a crunch moment. By then, the Director-General wants to ensure that agreement has been reached on details about what will be negotiated at Hong Kong’s ministerial meeting five months later. He wants no repeat of the Cancún fiasco: “That’s why I have been floating the idea that we make use of the July benchmark to do a stock-taking or reality check to see how far we have got and what we have done,” he says. “By July we should have this assessment, and not in October or November — it will be too late. If they (the ministers) want to do it — it’s July.” "

Anti-globalization workshops and demonstrations require advance planning, just as a ministerial meeting does. Alexandra Harney reports that planning for demonstrations at the Hong Kong meetings has already begun: "Protesters meet in HK ahead of WTO gathering".

"More than 10 months before Hong Kong hosts the World Trade Organisation's next ministerial meeting, non-governmental organisations are planning their own talks to craft a strategy for protests and other activities.

Hong Kong NGOs, union leaders and other groups have scheduled a meeting for February 26-27 in the former British colony "to map out the plan of action both during and leading up to" the December 13-18 meeting, said Rey Asis, regional secretary of the Asian Students Association, one of the organisers..."

Comments

[r4 carte]

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