Poor countries raised the prospect on Wednesday of additional wrangling at a key trade talks next month, saying they might raise their frustrations with Europe's sugar and banana reforms at the meeting.
Two weeks before the nearly 150 World Trade Organisation (WTO) member states meet in Hong Kong for what are likely to be strained talks over a new trade round, ministers from Africa, the Caribbean and beyond vented anger over the European reforms at a meeting in Brussels of the G90 developing nations group.
Many former European colonies stand to lose out from changes to rules that have protected their sugar and banana exports to the European Union against those of more competitive producers.
The EU says it had to make the changes after both systems were challenged in the WTO's arbitration panels.
"Since all this started at the WTO, it is natural that it would be looked at the WTO again," said Madan Murlidhar Dulloo, trade minister of Mauritius, who chaired the meeting.
Dulloo said 20,000 sugar jobs would be lost in Mauritius in coming on top of 40,000 lost in the textile industry which is struggling to compete against the growing strength of China.
Clement Rohee, trade minister of Guyana, said the EU's plan to pay 40 million euros ($47 million) in compensation in 2006 to developing sugar producers was "mere peanuts" and he accused Brussels of double standards by paying more to EU farmers.
"At the same time, you want to rely on us to give you support (in Hong Kong)?" Rohee told EU officials at the meeting.
Representatives of cotton producing countries in West Africa also complained that the United States proposal to eliminate export subsidies - which help support US cotton farmers among other producers - by 2010 was too slow.
"By 2010, we will have no more producers of cotton. It is as simple as that," said Senegal's trade minister Mamadou Diop.
EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson acknowledged there was an imbalance in the funds for the former colonial sugar producers and billions of euros that are earmarked for European producers hit by the reform. But he urged poor nations to overcome their grievances to move forward in Hong Kong.
A row between developed and developing countries, notably over farm subsidies for rich nations, contributed to the failure of a previous ministerial WTO meeting in Mexico in 2003.
Dulloo of Mauritius said the G90 did not want failure at Hong Kong. "We hope we can reconcile each and every interest at the end of the day," he said. Trade ministers at the December 13-18 meeting will seek a way out of an impasse that threatens a global trade round that was launched four years ago as a way to help developing countries.
The United States, Brazil and Australia and other countries accuse the EU of offering too little on farm imports. But Brussels says it can go no further, due to the refusal of France to make new concessions, and it now wants other partners to make offers on industrial goods and services.
Top negotiators from the EU, the United States, India, Brazil and Japan are due to hold talks on Friday and Saturday in Geneva on how to ensure the talks in Hong Kong can provide some form of basis for negotiations in early 2006.
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