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Commerce Minister Anand Sharma offered 'four principles' to break the impasse in the stalled-Doha trade negotiations, insisting that only a pronounced shift towards 'development objectives' could enable 'developing countries to bring more to the negotiations'.
Sharma, who took part in a series of meetings, including hosting receptions and dinners for trade ministers in different combinations, issued a 'sober' message without finger-pointing at any member on the factors that nearly paralysed the Doha trade negotiations.
Speaking at the inaugural session of the World Trade Organization's seventh ministerial meeting, which started amid sustained demonstrations by anti-globalisation protestors, Sharma said the first principle is 'major issues like DFQF (duty-free, quota-free market access for poorest countries), SSM (special safeguard mechanism), cotton, preference erosion, fishery subsidies, among others, need to be dealt with sympathetically as they have a major bearing on the development outcome of the round'.
On almost all issues listed in the first principle, the main hurdle for any successful resolution is the United States, which has adopted inflexible positions time and time again, suggesting that it can't address these issues unless it knows what it is getting from the round.
On the second principle, Sharma said: "In the process of bridging gaps, we cannot go back on the broad understandings of the past. Progress has to be based on the foundations already laid in the negotiations in the last eight years."
Here again, the US is not prepared to accept the 'broad understandings of the past' and is demanding a re-writing of the texts on market access for agriculture and industrial goods to help its agriculture producers and industrial manufacturing companies.
The commerce minister's third principle is 'demands for additional market access in developing countries have to based on development mandate. The mandate cannot be twisted to meet mercantilist expectations'.
And the fourth principle, according to Sharma's scheme, is 'while we have no problem of engaging in any format to move the negotiations forward, the multilateral process which guarantees transparency and inclusivity has to be the basic mode of negotiations'.
Ironically, the US has made it known time and time again that unless it secures a satisfactory outcome in the bilateral negotiations with China, India and Brazil in market access for its agriculture products and industrial goods, particularly zero-for-zero tariff elimination, it cannot close the deal.
