Anti-WTO activists celebrate the collapse of talks

CANCUN, Mexico, September 15 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Rich and poor countries traded accusations Monday, September 15, over the collapse of trade talks, with rich countries voicing dismay and developing nations warning they had only themselves to blame for refusing to cut heavy farm subsidies and help level the playing field on world markets.

For their part, officials from African cotton growing countries left a failed World Trade Organization (WTO) summit saying they had scored a political victory by bringing the concerns of their impoverished nations to the fore.

The five-day gathering, meant to advance the round of trade-opening talks launched in Doha, Qatar, two years ago, ran aground Sunday, September 14, raven by deep divisions between poor and rich nations, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"There are only losers, in the same way that everyone would have emerged as a winner if we had been able to reach agreement at Cancun ," European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said.

"I am among those who believe that a controlled opening of international commerce is necessary in the fight for development and against poverty."

However, Ugandan delegate Yashpal Tandon hit back by blaming rich countries for the impasse.

"They should have been faithful to the promise they made at Doha to talk about development," he said.

"The whole point is that Western countries utilized this meeting in order to push their issues."

Indian officials agreed, saying the talks had collapsed because developed nations failed to gauge poor countries concerns in drafting a new multilateral trade agreement.

"It showed that the developed nations were not able to understand the mood and sentiments of the poor nations at the meet," said Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley , who headed the Indian team in Cancun .

African Cotton On Spotlight

"There are only losers," Lamy

Mali 's Minister of Industry and Trade, Choguel Kokalla Maiga, told AFP that "the outcome for us is positive, because cotton, which was a taboo subject a few months ago, stole the limelight from many other topics and was integrated into the negotiations".

Benin,Burkina Faso,Chad and Mali - among the poorest countries in the world - came to Cancun to demand an end to cotton subsidies in wealthy countries, as well as compensation for losses resulting from those subsidies.

West and Central African countries lose up to a billion dollars in export and related revenue each year because of market-distorting assistance offered to cotton farmers in wealthy nations, especially the United States , they said.

The African initiative, presented last Wednesday, won support from other developing countries opposed to wealthy nations' agricultural subsidies.

Non-governmental organizations at the conference also applauded the initiative, saying Africa's cotton woes were a case-study of how the WTO increases poverty in poor countries and systematically adopts rules advantageous to rich ones.

U.S. cotton subsidies encourage over-production and export dumping, and drive down the world price, resulting in the loss of livelihoods in Africa and other developing countries, the British relief organization Oxfam said.

Cotton is a major source of foreign exchange and government revenue for the four African countries, which are among the world's most efficient cotton producers, it said.

"We're not asking for the moon, we're only asking the WTO to uphold fair trade rules, which it claims to embrace, so that our farmers can live and work in dignity," Maiga said when presenting the initiative Wednesday.

The WTO responded by placing the measure on the agenda for discussion.

Describing the initiative as having "strong moral and economic merit", WTO director-general Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand urged ministers to "fully explore all avenues for an appropriate and satisfactory solution".

But it had little chance of succeeding, a European source observed, because U.S. politicians could not afford to anger 25,000 U.S. cotton farmers and the powerful cotton lobby ahead of an election year.

African delegates were outraged by the draft text of a final declaration, released Saturday.

"We felt humiliated, more than anything, dragged in the mud," one said.

Another called the document "disgraceful."

The text contained no commitment to elimination of the cotton subsidies in the short term - and mentioned promoting "diversification programs" in African economies.

"They thumbed their noses at us in the most incredible way. We produce the least expensive cotton in the world, but they were telling us to go produce something else because Americans don't play by the rules," another African delegate said.

That bitterness played a role in the outcome of the conference, and in the refusal of poor countries to open negotiations on new subjects such as cross-border investment, delegates said.

In the end, "the failure of the conference is not a failure for us, because they wanted to impose something worse on us, and we were able to react," the Malian minister said.

"We will continue to fight for our cotton, at the WTO and elsewhere," he said.