Mandelson courts developing countries

Date: 01/12/05

Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson this week renewed his attempts to keep world trade talks on track while resisting pressure for the EU to make further concessions.

With only two weeks to go before a crucial meeting of trade ministers in Hong Kong, Mandelson announced on Wednesday (30 November) that he would back efforts to get agreement in Hong Kong on trade measures aimed specifically at helping the least-developed countries.

Mandelson pushed this proposal at an emergency meeting on Wednesday of trade ministers from the Group of 90 poorer developing countries who had gathered in Brussels to try to hammer out a common approach to the Hong Kong meeting.

But India's Trade Minister Kamel Nath, one of several senior officials from outside the G90 who attended, struck a sceptical tone after the Mandelson statement saying "statements of good intentions are fine, but they must translate into figures and formulas".

A diplomat who attended the G90 meeting said that the EU officials had been shocked at the criticism from trade officials.

The idea of a package of trade measures had been discussed with members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (APC) countries at meetings on Tuesday (29 November) with Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, and with Mandelson.

Mandelson said the talks were "far from where we hoped to be". But he shifted the blame for the stalemate to major agricultural exporting countries such as Australia and Brazil. "This is a development round, not an agricultural exporters' round," he said, in a speech on Wednesday to the European Parliament.

Lamy said: "All the participants in the talks ... know that they are in danger of a surge of protectionism if the talks were to break down."

Article reports on efforts by the European Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson, to make concessions towards developing countries in order to reach a positive outcome of the World Trade Organisation's Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong.