Sutton given key to 'green room'

By FRAN O'SULLIVAN at the WTO

Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton does not expect the tough, round-the-clock negotiations in Cancun to reach a conclusion until well past fatigue point.

"We've agreed on the process for the 'green room', Mr Sutton said at 2am (Mexico time) yesterday.

"We'll get going again tomorrow and run to dawn again. The sentiment is quite good."

He was speaking from the auditorium at the Cancun Convention Centre, where trade ministers from 146 nations were finally coming to the end of the lengthy process of producing verbal responses to a draft negotiating framework to unlock the stalled Doha Round.

The text - which had been issued after four days of talks in Cancun - did not satisfy any of the key players.

The "rich nations" - the European Union, the United States and Japan, which had been the targets of bitter opposition from a bunch of "poor" militant nations headed by Brazil, India and China - professed they were not happy with the hand that Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez had dealt them.

But when the rhetoric is stripped away, it is clear they achieved more of their agenda than the militant G22 group, which had wanted wholesale removal of agricultural export subsidies by rich nations.

Last night, Sutton was chipper that New Zealand had received an invitation to join the select group of countries to enter the "green room" for the final round of bargaining at this marathon meeting of the World Trade Organisation.

Management consultants would throw up their hands in horror at the WTO style of decision-making. But when the going gets political, it is the tough who are invited to get going.

A mere handful of the trade ministers in Cancun, expected to be between 26 and 40, have been picked by Mr Derbez to join the secretive process.

Asked why New Zealand was in the frame, Mr Sutton pointed to Prime Minister Helen Clark's successful hosting of a WTO "mini-ministerial" at the annual OECD meeting in April.

Mr Sutton has drawn closer to US Trade Representative Bob Zoellick and European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, who are keen "green room" players, in the many "mini-ministerials" since then.

In April, Helen Clark told the Herald that trade discussions "always look bleak".

"It's the way trade talks always work," Clark said. "They work through crisis ... then they'll sit up for hours and Mike Moore's eyes are hanging out like bean bags and then something happens."

Mr Moore is not in the picture this time round, though some long-term trade players joke that they wish "Mike was here to send out the black helicopters" to chase down those standing in the way of a fast conclusion.

The mysterious "green room" process that the WTO uses has been repeatedly attacked by non-governmental organisations in Cancun as a "privileged mechanism that the rich use to shut the poor out".

In the WTO's failed Seattle talks in 1999, marginalised poor nations walked out in protest at being shut out of the final negotiations.

Opponents claim the process is anti-democratic, it is secretive and that the agenda for the many is set by the few.

Mr Sutton maintained there was no way a negotiating framework would be finalised without reducing the number of participants. And even then it would be a lengthy process.

"It's not generally easy to get a good deal until everyone's fatigued."

The Competitive Enterprise Institute says the anti-globalisation movement is in retreat at Cancun after environmental protesters failed to scupper the institute's distribution of two tonnes of food aid to a poor village in Quintana Roo at the weekend.

The protesters claimed the food was poison because it included some GM ingredients but the villagers accepted it and asked for more.

"Hungry people don't reject food and progress," said Gregory Conko, director of food safety policy at the institute.

But the institute spoke too soon as anti-globalists once again took to the streets in large numbers chanting "Down, down WTO."

But this time they were not joined by as many journalists. Protest fatigue - not to mention the incessant 35C heat - played a part.

But the more significant aspect was that the WTO had finally produced something, even if the delegates were not in universal agreement.

* MFAT, Fonterra and the NZ Trade Liberalisation Network are contributing to Fran O'Sullivan's trip to Cancun.