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Cabinet clears Indian stand for Doha meet; opposes new WTO agenda

The Cabinet Committee on WTO on Thursday finalised the Indian stand for the forthcoming Doha ministerial conference opposing launch of a new trade negotiation round in the World Trade Organisation unless a consensus is reached among the member countries.

However, the CCWTO, presided over by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, directed the Indian delegation for the Doha conference, to be held between November 9 and 13, to hold 'further discussions in the light of future developments'.

The Indian delegation for the Doha conference will be led by Commerce and Industry Minister Murasoli Maran.

While the developed nations spearheaded by the United States and European Union have been pressuring the developing countries for the launch of a new round at Doha, India and other Third World nations are against accepting new market access obligations in the guise of a fresh round.

Maran briefed the CCWTO how India has been opposing inclusion of the contentious issues like industrial tariffs, investment, competition policy, trade facilitation, labour and environment standards into the WTO agenda.

"Only those issues on which there is a consensus amongst the members of the WTO should be considered for inclusion (in the WTO agenda)," said an official statement at the end of the CCWTO meeting.

Maran briefed the members of the CCWTO about the draft ministerial declaration and the draft decisions on the implementation related concerns of the developing countries. He said that after the failure of the last ministerial conference at Seattle in 1999, the Doha conference has assumed significance for strengthening the multilateral trading system of WTO.

India has emphasised that WTO is a forum for continuous negotiations and negotiations can be started only on trade related item 'if there is a consensus for such a negotiation'.

India along with other developing and the least developed countries has been demanding settling of their implementation related issues and concerns in terms of the May 2000 resolution of the WTO general council.

The minister conveyed to the CCWTO the significant support of the developing countries, latest being the resolution of G-77 group and China on October 22 demanding the immediate resolution of the balance of implementation related concerns and for opposing the inclusion of any new agenda items into WTO.

The resolution said that inclusion of new agenda would further burden the developing countries with 'onerous obligations'.

The G-77 and China have also demanded that proposals of developing countries to redress the development deficit in WTO must constitute the first priority in the multilateral trading system.

Maran informed the committee that different political parties have broadly endorsed the stand taken by the country on various WTO issues.

After initial apprehensions over the venue of the ministerial conference, the WTO general council has decided to stick to Doha as Qatar has assured the multilateral body of addressing all the security related concerns of the participants.

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