Hong Kong – WTO negotiators cut a last-minute deal Sunday on ending farm-export subsidies and other trade barriers, claiming modest progress toward their goal of forging a global trade pact by late 2006.
The agreement was a badly needed breakthrough for the World Trade Organization, whose credibility was on the line following devastating collapses of two of its last three key meetings.
Past WTO gatherings served as a battlefield for anti-globalization protests, but Hong Kong authorities managed to prevent violent clashes between police and activists from spoiling the talks.
Although riots erupted outside the convention center Saturday, a march Sunday by 5,000 demonstrators ended without violence.
Dickering until the last min ute, delegates from wealthy and poor countries reconciled their conflicting interests, agreeing to eliminate farm-export subsidies by 2013, to work toward dismant ling trade barriers in manufacturing and services and to provide greater protections and support for developing countries.
“You put the round back on track. You gave it a new sense of urgency,” a jubilant WTO chief Pascal Lamy told the delegates, many of whom had worked almost round-the-clock hashing out their differences.
Developing nations felt the final agreement addressed many of their concerns, from opening up rich nations’ farming markets to measures that could enable the world’s poorest countries to increase their tiny share in global trade.
“We welcome it,” said India’s Trade Minister Kamal Nath. “It is focused, and it strikes at various problems of developing countries.”
But the lack of progress at the six-day meeting left some disappointed – and put pressure on the WTO if it hopes to conclude a binding global trade treaty by the end of next year.
“The agreement we have reached, if it didn’t make the conference a success, it certainly saved it from failure,” said EU trade chief Peter Mandelson, whose delegation came under heavy pressure to cut barriers protecting Europe’s agriculture market.
