EU puts final touches to world trade talks strategy

Foreign ministers of the 25 member states of the European Union meet in Brussels Monday to put the final touches to their joint negotiating position at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks which open in Geneva on Tuesday.
The meeting, the first since the breakdown of negotiations in Cancun in Mexico last September, is seen as crucial since the present European Commission leaves office on October 31 and presidential elections are due to take place in the United States in early November.
Failure to reach a deal in the so-called Doha round of talks could lead to a stalemate in the talks that could last for years, WTO director-general Supachai Panitchpakdi has warned.
The EU will be represented in Geneva by Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, one of the two French commissioners. But France disagrees with the commission on the issue of agricultural subsidies.
The commission welcomed a new draft compromise as "a basis for further work" when the head of the WTO's general council, Japanese ambassador Shotaro Oshima, presented it in mid-July.
In a letter sent last week to French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, commission President Romano Prodi conceded that Oshima's plan needed "important clarifications" but he did not reject it outright as Paris wanted.
France has complained that the Oshima compromise "is deeply unbalanced to the disadvantage of the EU." But commission sources say it is an improvement on previous proposals. The plan makes room, for example, for market access for certain sensitive products for developed countries. It also takes up the demand by Brussels for equivalent treatment for export subsidies, which are largely used by the EU, and other mechanisms of support such as food aid, which the US commonly uses.
Responding to the concerns of Raffarin and France's powerful farming lobby, Prodi said France was also mistaken about the negotiating timetable because the talks next week are aimed at defining a framework for more conclusive talks and are not the conclusions themselves, which will depend on the balance of compromises to come. French opposition to the EU making concessions on agriculture in WTO talks and the strife that causes in the EU are not new and were already present during the last so-called Uruguay round of multilateral negotiations.
The Oshima plan calls for an end to subsidies to farm exports but does not call for parallel action by the chief exporters, among them the US. The ministers will also discuss the Middle East and the situation in the Gaza strip, described as "worrying" by diplomatic sources. They will hear a report from the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Javier Solana, recently in the region on a trip marked by bitter attacks on the EU from Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.