Farming nations steel for global free-trade push

By Greg Ansley

CANBERRA - The Cairns Group of agricultural fair-trading nations will meet in Argentina tomorrow to stiffen resolve for global trade reform ahead of the Apec summit in Auckland and the launch of a new World Trade Organisation round in Seattle.

Central to the meeting will be the presence as an observer of the United States Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman.

His support will be essential if agriculture is to be embraced in a comprehensive new round of WTO negotiations starting this year.

Mr Glickman will come under strong pressure to give assurances of US commitment to further reform, a position that has been undermined by Washington's decisions to approve a new programme of emergency farm support and to penalise imports of New Zealand and Australian lamb.

Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile said yesterday that the Cairns Group meetings were "an all-important opportunity to move the US along".

Mr Vaile, a novice in the portfolio vacated dramatically by Tim Fischer in Auckland during Apec ministerial talks, will chair the meeting on his first overseas trip since taking the job.

A key aim will be to cement tactics to pull Apec behind further reform - eight of the 15 Cairns Group leaders will be at the Auckland summit - and to shore up the group's position as the third major force in global trade negotiations, along with the US and European Union.

The group's most fundamental tasks will be to ensure that a new negotiating round is launched in Seattle, and that agriculture is accepted on the same terms as trade in merchandise, services and manufactured goods.

"We expect to see a very strong political demand for trade in agricultural products to be put on the same basis as all other traded goods," Mr Vaile said.

The group will also target export subsidies, barriers to market access and domestic support systems.

However, Mr Vaile indicated that the group might not be able to achieve the "immediate elimination and prohibition" of all forms of export subsidies sought in the vision statement submitted to the WTO ahead of the Seattle meeting.

"You have to work to a target," he said.

"It's not going to happen overnight.

"We are arguing for the abolition of export subsidies ... but we all know what the world trading environment is like and it works by degrees."