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Trade ministers face tough bargaining in Qatar

Ministers from 142 countries meet on Friday to decide whether to launch new trade liberalisation talks that rich countries say would give a much-needed lift to the struggling world economy.

At a five-day World Trade Organisation conference in the Qatari capital Doha, trade ministers will try to hammer out their differences over agriculture, environment and other issues and agree on an agenda for a new round of global trade negotiations -- the first since the 1986-1993 Uruguay round.

Rich countries' delegates who are pushing for a new trade round say it would boost the economy at a time when the world is teetering on the brink of recession following the September 11 attacks on US cities.

A second failure to launch a round, following the breakdown of the 1999 Seattle WTO conference, would send a negative economic signal and undermine the WTO, they say.

Some developing countries, however, say they have seen little benefit from earlier trade liberalisation and are being pushed into new negotiations by industrial countries looking to expand their markets.

A senior US trade official said on Thursday that, although difficult negotiations lay ahead, it was "certainly do-able" to launch new global trade negotiations in Doha.

"All countries are trying to find the formula by which more open international trade can best contribute to economic recovery..," he said.

Agriculture will again be a flashpoint at the meeting, with the European Union set to resist calls from the Cairns group of leading food exporters such as Australia and Canada for a new trade round to aim at the abolition of agricultural export subsidies.

The EU wants to clarify the WTO's rules on environmental issues and to start negotiations on investment and competition rules -- all areas where developing countries are resisting WTO talks.

INTENSE SECURITY

The conference opens with statements by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, and WTO director-general Mike Moore.

The WTO conference will also crown China's 15-year effort to join the world trade watchdog. China will seal its entry into the WTO in Doha on Saturday, bringing an emerging economic giant under the organisation's rules and disciplines.

The conference is being held under intense security following the September 11 attacks and the US retaliatory strikes on Afghanistan. Soldiers guard all entrances to the complex where the talks are being held and traffic is kept well away.

Security fears led to speculation last month that the long-planned conference could be switched elsewhere and those fears surged again on Wednesday when guards at a Qatar air base shot dead a Qatari man after he opened fire on the base used by US warplanes.

The US Navy helicopter ship Peleliu and two other vessels with 2,100 Marines have moved into the Gulf off Qatar to offer security for the meeting, a US official in Washington said on Thursday.

"It is a precautionary move," the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

The Peleliu and other ships of its type have previously been used to evacuate Americans and other people using helicopters from hostile situations.

The last WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999 was held against a backdrop of huge street demonstrations by anti-globalisation activists who accuse the WTO of promoting global rules at the expense of individual countries' ability to set their own environmental and other standards.

There is unlikely to be any repetition of the Seattle protests in Doha because unions say only 300 representatives of non-governmental organisations have been allowed into Doha.

Although barred from travelling to Qatar, anti-globalisation protesters plan to spread their demonstrations against the WTO from Mexico to Mongolia this week with an added anti-war element to their protests.

"It's symbolic that it (the WTO conference) should be taking place in a desert. It seems the WTO wants to shut out the workers," Margret Moenig-Raane, deputy leader of Germany's largest union Verdi told a news conference in Berlin.

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