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Security fears put Qatar WTO talks in balance

The choice of Qatar as the venue for crucial world trade talks next month is in the balance because of security concerns raised by the US-led war against terrorism, trade ministers and officials said on Sunday.

The ministers, speaking after two days of informal talks in Singapore, underlined their determination to hold a long-planned conference from November 9-13 under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation to try to launch a new round of negotiations to lower barriers to global commerce.

But they said worries about holding the conference in Qatar were so great in the aftermath of last month's deadly attacks against the United States that they were considering alternative venues, including Singapore and Geneva.

"Everyone everywhere should be concerned about security because the world changed fundamentally on September 11," Mike Moore, the WTO's director-general, told reporters.

Al Qaeda, bin Laden's shadowy guerrilla network, has warned the United States and Britain to end their military action and get out of the Gulf or suffer more violent attacks.

The strikes were launched against Afghanistan in retaliation for harbouring Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the attacks on New York and Washington.

Qatar, a staunch ally of Washington, occupies a peninsular that juts out from Saudi Arabia into the Gulf opposite Iran.

Officials stopped short of saying Doha, the Qatari capital, was doomed as the venue for November's talks. They said the decision would be left to the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

"I don't want our Qatari friends to be offended in any way by evoking alternative locations," said Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner.

Nevertheless, Singapore's trade minister, George Yeo, said the city state, which hosted the inaugural WTO ministerial conference in 1996, would be prepared to step into the breach.

"Singapore and a number of other countries have been sounded out in an informal way whether we could host it in an emergency," Yeo told reporters. "We've done some preliminary checks...and we could probably do something on a much scaled-down basis."

Other possible venues mentioned on the fringes of the weekend talks of 21 ministers were Geneva, where the 142-member WTO has its headquarters, and Mexico, which played host to an earlier 'mini-ministerial' meeting in late August.

AGENDA NEARLY COMPLETE

On the substance of the talks, ministers said they had narrowed their differences on the agenda, which Singapore's Yeo and US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said was now 75 per cent agreed.

Zoellick said he hoped 95 per cent of the agenda would be settled by the time ministers meet next month.

"I believe there is a right balance of interests that can be found to enable us to launch the multilateral negotiations at the upcoming ministerial meeting. It's very important for the global economy that we do so, and it's very important for world politics that we do so," Zoellick said.

Moore, the WTO chief, agreed with Zoellick's assessment of how much ground had been covered. "We're getting closer in a number of areas," he said.

But Moore warned that agreement was not assured. "It's that last five per cent, isn't it?" he said. "Great national interests are at stake, and there are still substantial differences."

On the key issues for a new trade round, Lamy said he was confident there was now a better understanding that one of the EU's top political priorities -- ensuring free trade does not override food safety and environmental concerns -- was not a back-door attempt to shut out exports.

But Zoellick underlined Washington's refusal in a new trade round to abandon laws -- heavily criticised by Japan and many poor countries -- that impose duties on exporters judged to be dumping goods at unfairly cheap prices.

And, in what trade officials took to be a reaffirmation of Tokyo's unwillingness to open up significantly its highly protected farm sector, a Japanese official said agricultural liberalisation should take place at a 'reasonable' pace.

In another sticky area, the demand by developing countries that rich states fully implement earlier market-opening measures, Singapore's Yeo said the general mood was positive.

But Indian Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran said he was far from satisfied. "Mere beautiful words will not do. Substantial improvements are necessary," he said.

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