Revisiting The Gulf

If the fourth WTO ministerial conference actually opens in Doha as scheduled on Friday and ends four days later without a major security incident — without, say, the participants being airlifted to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf — the delegates will have overcome their easiest hurdle.

Assuming that the World Trade Organizations 142 member nations keep their nerve and that no terrorist threat disrupts the meeting, they will find themselves again ensnared on the same thorny issues that left them bloodied in Seattle in 1999.

What they decide in Qatar, says the WTOs director general, Mike Moore, “will shape the future of the global trading system in the 21st century.” But apart from admitting China as a potentially balance-shifting new member of the organization, what those decisions are likely to be is far from certain. Will divisions be glossed over and a new round of trade talks agreed, as most observers seem to expect, or will differences between — and among — “have” and “have-not” nations again prove too contentious for progress to be made?

“Theyve solved virtually none of the substantive problems, but process-wise theres a political will to go forward,” says a U.S. congressional aide who has been monitoring pre-Doha events closely. “Having another food fight like they did in Seattle is unseemly and out of the question.”

At the top of the list of potential deal breakers on a new trade round, however, is access to affordable essential medicines, such as those needed to combat the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Africa. “Negotiations so far have not gone in the direction of the developing countries,” says David Earnshaw, Oxfam Internationals lobbyist in Brussels. “The poor countries need a down-payment to launch a new trade round — and that would be an acceptable agreement on trips” — the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights accord, applied to patented drugs during the WTOs Uruguay Round. The developing countries case got a fleeting — and aberrant — boost in the wake of the handful of U.S. anthrax cases.

Concerned that they might quickly need large amounts of the patented antibiotic Cipro, the U.S. and Canada successfully bargained down the drugs price with its German manufacturer, Bayer — after Canadian health authorities and the U.S. Congress threatened to purchase cheaper generic versions. “Thats what Brazil did with Roche,” the Swiss company, over the aids drug Viracept in September — and what any country will try “when its up against the wall,” says Earnshaw.

The European Unions trade negotiators will travel to the Qatari capital chastened and changed by bitter memories of Seattle. There, Europes agenda was aimed at launching an ambitious round of talks encompassing agricultural subsidies, competition policy, environmental issues and more. But the meeting was overshadowed by riots outside and battles inside as poor countries accused the E.U. and the U.S. of trying to bulldoze them into submission. That spectacular failure pressed home the importance of good preparation and realistic expectations. Doha, says a top European trade official, will profit from “a better text at the opening.”

The Europeans are keen to get the WTO to clarify how its rules are supposed to jibe with trade provisions of environmental accords. High on the poor nations agenda is the addressing of “implementation” issues, wherein trade rules can be skewed to the advantage of rich countries because the technical hurdles are too high for poor ones. Shanker A. Singham, a U.S.-based specialist in international trade law and policy, says a new trade round is “critical to future global economic growth and to pulling the world out of recession quickly.” In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., he adds, most wto members feel “an urgent need to move liberalization forward,” bringing trade benefits to the developing world “in order to alleviate the poverty where terror breeds.” Says E.U. trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy: “Trade cannot make peace, but trade can help.”

While convening in Qatar this week entails physical risk for WTO delegates, a nervous world will see how much risk they are willing to take at the conference table.