Countries pledge another WTO farm talks push

Trade diplomats pledged on Tuesday to make another push for a deal to open world farm markets, calling proposals meant to break a deadlock "a good starting point" for negotiations resuming in September.
"They are all ready to work," New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, chairman of the World Trade Organisation agriculture talks, said after diplomats met to discuss suggestions he floated last week on subsidies and tariffs.
Falconer said he would revise his proposals, which offer a range of possible cuts to farm market protections, after WTO negotiations begin again on September 3, but declined to say how quickly countries may inch toward consensus.
"It takes as long as it takes," he told reporters. Launched in the Qatari capital in November 2001, the WTO's latest liberalisation talks known as the Doha round have struggled to overcome many countries' fear of exposing sensitive agricultural and manufacturing industries to more competition.
The negotiations faltered in July 2006 and have failed to gather much momentum since. The texts from Falconer and Canadian Ambassador to the WTO Don Stephenson, who chairs the WTO's industrial goods talks, were circulated on July 17 to help chart a way out of the impasse.
At Tuesday's meeting, developing countries said the farm proposals contained "many gaps" but could be improved. The United States, which has been under pressure to cut the size of its trade-distorting farm subsidies, currently capped at about $48 billion, also welcomed the text as a launching point. "We will be back on day one and stay through the process," said Joe Glauber, the chief US agriculture negotiator.
He told journalists that Washington wanted more concessions in return for cuts to its subsidies, and rejected the low end of the $13 billion to $16.4 billion range which Falconer suggested. Washington has offered a ceiling of $17 billion.
"Low teens are out of the question," Glauber said. Diplomats are due to return to the WTO on Wednesday to discuss Stephenson's proposals on trade in manufactured goods, which urge developing countries to offer more than they have.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has been pushing to wrap up the negotiations in 2007 to avoid having the talks spill over into US and Indian election periods.
Diplomats said they hoped to reach an agreement on the basic elements in agriculture and industrial goods by October, with remaining issues dealt with by the end of the year. It would then take months for legal intricacies to be ironed out, meaning a Doha deal may not be signed until spring 2008.