World trade talks urgent - Sutton

By RON CORBEN

BANGKOK - Failure to restart World Trade Organisation talks towards a new round of trade liberalisation would be "catastrophic," says the Minister for Trade Negotiations, Jim Sutton.

But Mr Sutton, who is in Bangkok for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), said there was a "window of opportunity" later this year to revive the world trade negotiations.

The minister's warning comes as International Monetary Fund managing director Michel Camdessus, also at the Unctad meeting, said revival of the WTO talks was seen as necessary to "stimulate and sustain the global recovery that is under way."

Talks in Seattle late last year collapsed amid street protests and violence and failure within the meeting to reach consensus over trade and agricultural liberalisation.

This week's Unctad conference has been viewed as a bridge to rebuild confidence in the world's trading system after the failure at Seattle to press ahead with new efforts to liberalise trade.

Mr Camdessus said the events in Seattle, "both in the conference halls and on the streets, " showed there were still "vested interests to confront and people to convince" over the merits of a multilateral trading system.

Mr Sutton told the Business Herald the world could not "afford to have another failure like we had in Seattle."

"Next time ministers get together to launch a new round, they have to be successful. A second failure would leave us dead in the water. There would be a catastrophic loss of confidence in the [WTO] and its structures and procedures."

The Unctad conference - centred on issues linked with less-developed and newly industrialised countries has focused on the impacts of globalisation and efforts to reduce the widening gaps between rich and poor both between and within nations.

But countries such as New Zealand and Australia, in bilateral meetings, have also been moving to rebuild momentum for a fresh round of WTO multilateral trade talks.

"We haven't given up on the chance of launching a new round [of talks], and that's obviously one of the reasons we are here, to see how other people feel about that," Mr Sutton said.

He said there appeared to be an "improved atmosphere" between the United States and European Union since the time of Seattle.

Argument between the US and EU countries has often centred on agricultural subsidies, and restricting market access to developing countries' agricultural products.

But Mr Sutton said agriculture "isn't just a political issue involving votes of French and American farmers," it was also enabling people in less-developed states "to get on the first rung of economic development."