Dipak Patel, the Zambian trade minister explains:
I was prepared to walk away from the table in Hong Kong but the way things have turned out since Uruguay and Marrakesh is that the multi-lateral trade organisation is now in our interest because it's a rule-based system. Walking away from it and destroying the WTO would not be in our interests, because then countries would get into bi-lateral agreements - and our negotiating capacity and authority and power on a bi-lateral basis is extremely weak, politically and economically. We have to engage at the WTO…but not at any cost.
He also notes the role of international assistance in supporting Zambia's negotiating efforts:
The good thing is that for the whole of last year, through DFID [The UK's Department for International Development - Ben], no strings attached, we were given technical assistance. Prior to Hong Kong, up to Cancun, we were always in negotiations and waiting for the Americans or whoever to develop a proposal, and then we'd react.
What DFID did at our request, was to provide the assistance for us to do the technical work on things such as rules of origin – so that in Hong Kong we had our proposals on the table and did not wait for anyone else. We had our own language on the table. That assistance continues. We've never had the ability to put proposals on the table. I mean the Financial Times has a bigger trade team than our entire trade division.
From: "The devil is in the detail": Zambian trade minister on trade and the WTO. (U.K. Department of International Development, March? 2006)
Also see Dipak Patel and Doha (based on a Financial Times story, December 2005)
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