Leaders praise WTO trade agreement

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Upheaval at WTO
Hong Kong police use tear gas and pepper spray to repell anti-globalization protestors.

The agreement approved by all the WTO’s 149 member countries and territories also gives the world’s poorest nations special trade privileges. Exporters from least developed countries — with annual per capita incomes of less than $750 — will be allowed duty-free and quota-free market access on 97 percent of the products imported by rich nations by 2008.

“That is something people have only dreamed of up until this time,” said New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Clark said getting rid of export subsidies by 2013 is an advance — but said progress needs to continue.

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“There’s still the market access issue, and that’s us getting our goods into other markets without high tariffs, and that’s what’s proving a bit tricky at the moment,” she told TV One Monday.

French President Jacques Chirac welcomed the accord, saying Sunday that it favors France and global economic growth, but that it did not go far enough to help poorer nations.

The deal “will contribute to development of the poorest countries while still preserving the indispensable potential of European agriculture,” Chirac said in a statement. France’s farmers are among the top beneficiaries of EU agricultural subsidies.

However, he added, “this progress on development still remains insufficient and must be followed up upon.”

Germany’s economy minister, Michael Glos, said the outcome fell “short of expectations.”

“In the new year, it will be important for us to represent emphatically in the follow-up negotiations in Geneva the interests of our industry in opening markets,” he said.

The agreement falls far short of the delegates’ original ambition for Hong Kong: producing a detailed outline for a final trade treaty that would conclude the Doha round of talks, named after Qatar’s capital, where it was launched in 2001 particularly to address the concerns of poorer nations.

Negotiators now aim to work out formulas for cutting farm and industrial tariffs and subsidies — the nuts and bolts of an eventual trade pact — by April 30.

“The progress made today really lays the groundwork for negotiations going forward,” said Susan Schwab, a deputy U.S. trade representative.

Activists and other critics of the Geneva-based WTO claim its work on opening up markets benefits big companies and the rich at the expense of ordinary workers and the poor.

Past WTO gatherings served as battlefields for anti-globalization protests, but Hong Kong authorities managed to prevent violent clashes between police and activists from disrupting the talks. More than 800 protesters — mostly South Korean farmers — remained in detention Monday. Police rounded them up after they went on a violent rampage Saturday outside the WTO convention hall in downtown Hong Kong.

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