Select Committee on International Development Minutes of Evidence



Examination of witnesses (Questions 358 - 379)

TUESDAY 23 MAY

THE RT HON CLARE SHORT and MR JOHN ROBERTS

Chairman

  358. Can I welcome you once more, Secretary of State, to our Committee. We are at the end of an exhaustive inquiry into the WTO of which this is the last evidence session we are taking, so we are very anxious to hear your views and also that you bring us up to date with the current events because things have moved on since Seattle, as you know. Can I also welcome Mr Roberts who, I understand, is acting as the Head of the Economic Trade Department. Is that what you call it? Perhaps you can tell us.
  (Mr Roberts) The International Economic Policy Department.
  (Clare Short) And he has a lot of detailed expertise on trade. He is a considerable resource.

  359. I understand that you would like to make a brief opening statement, Secretary of State.
  (Clare Short) Thank you, just very brief. I think it is my very strong view that the World Trade Organisation is the best possible chance developing countries have and the global system has of establishing equitable rules of trade and creating conditions where the poorer countries can get more benefits from international trade. It is remarkable what a bad press it has had and the sort of atmospherics out of Seattle in that it has taken over from the IMF as the organisation everyone concerned with development wants to hate. In fact, as you all know, it is only five years old, considerably more democratic than the old GATT negotiations in that countries join by choice, it makes its decisions by consensus, it is a rules-based organisation and, therefore, it does not matter if you are big or little, you are all subject to the same rules and there are arbitration procedures available for you. That is a very considerable advance on the arrangements that there were under GATT and again, as you all know, very large numbers of developing countries, three-quarters of the membership and more to come, have chosen individually to join. Now, all that said, I think there are problems in the adjustment of its procedures to the new more democratic arrangements. The GATT used to be an organisation dominated by a few rich trading countries or blocs and now it has to adjust its procedures to the fact that it is much more a membership-based, rules-based organisation and we saw all sorts of glitches in the procedures at Seattle, but there we are. I think anyone concerned with development or the interests of developing countries or the need to improve their prospects for growing their economy through increased trading opportunities and attracting inward investment should firmly support the existence of the World Trade Organisation and the continuance of its work and authority and support a new trade Round. The problem we have there is that trade is becoming more and more complicated and lots of developing countries in whose objective interest I am convinced a comprehensive Round is—sorry about the construction of that sentence—are just really worried by the complexity of the issues they have to negotiate. We have been trying, as you know, to do a lot of capacity-building and encourage more capacity-building and have done a lot, and there is a lot more to do, but my own strong argument is that delay deprives developing countries of trading opportunities and opportunities for economic growth, that because people lack expertise, they quite reasonably say, "Let's go more slowly", but the world economy is not going more slowly and if things do not change to improve their opportunities, they are missing out and the poor and their children will only be the age they are once and either be in school or not be in school or be well nourished or not be well nourished. The final point I wish to make is that I thought that the suggestion Alec Erwin made at Seattle, and I do not know if he repeated it when he appeared before you, but he has done a fantastically constructive job in trying to build an alliance of developing countries to influence the Round and take it forward and I have been very impressed indeed by his performance, but he has suggested that the Round should start with the built-in agenda and then have some pauses for capacity-building for negotiators before moving on to some of the really complicated questions like competition policy and investment, and I still think that is a really constructive and sensible proposal. The World Trade Organisation is a precious development instrument almost and those who are attacking it are, I am afraid, in the words of that Malaysian Minister at Davos, "organisations that claim to be in favour of development who are trying to save the developing world from development".

  Chairman: Well, Secretary of State, we saw Alec Erwin last week, as you know, and he is very much in line with all that you have said to us this morning, that the comprehensive Round is very important for the developing countries, and he sees it from the point of view that you have just expressed to us. He did in fact say, "If the WTO goes down, we, the developing countries, go down with it", and so he is clearly right in line with what you are saying and he illustrated that.

Mr Rowe

  360. He also said, "The commitment to the WTO by the developing countries is massive. The protest groups say that it is working against us, and of course there are aspects that are working against us, but we will negotiate that. We do not need anyone else to negotiate that for us; we will negotiate that". I just wondered—and we asked Sir John Vereker the same question in a way—how do you see the accountability of NGOs being properly exposed and explored because at the present moment somebody who set up an NGO yesterday, if they have got funds or if they have got three or four people good at publicity, can actually have a voice on the world stage which carries a totally spurious credibility? I just wondered if you had any views about how we can actually address this question of to whom are NGOs accountable, how is that accountability to be expressed and how does it inter-relate with the responsibility they claim they have for a constituency which they have not been elected to represent?
  (Clare Short) I think this is a very important question and it is causing increasing tension. The governments of developing countries are becoming more and more exasperated that NGOs that claim to be concerned about development speak so often in their name and often make arguments with which they do not agree. On the arguments of making the WTO more transparent, developing countries by and large are not in favour of opening up to NGOs because they think their voices will be squashed by these forces. I think they have got a real problem in that the world is changing under our feet, as we know, and a lot of well-meaning NGOs just cannot command the detail of what is happening to international trade and investment and so on and are adopting a posture of, "This is all multinational capital. It is all exploitative", and I call it the "Keep your dirty capital out of Africa" sentiment. A lot of it is well meant, but it is sort of this romantic idea of the noble poverty of the rural poor of Africa and South Asia living at peace with nature and their environment and spiritually at one. There are a lot of people, really good people, who believe in these sentiments and it is very dangerous. A lot of them are good, well-meaning people and I think what we have to do, committees like this, individuals like me, is to try to make the arguments, take it on, try to nurture our relationships with the responsible NGOs and try to share the information and the thinking and encourage them to take on the bigger and more responsible agenda, but in the end to whom are they accountable? Nobody. Those who give the money of course, but they are not and far too often we slip from talking about civil society to meaning development NGOs, and the World Bank's survey, which we helped to fund, of the opinions of very poor people across the world showed that they did not trust their governments, they did not trust politicians, they did not see much of NGOs, and the people they trusted most were their mosques and their churches. We need an openness to civil society, but we need to really mean civil society and the people that are close to the poor of the world, not self-appointed groupings who claim to speak on their behalf, and we have got a very serious problem here. My final point is that the world turned to protectionism once before in the 1930s and I think it would be very complacent to assume that we are going to go forward with a stronger WTO and fairer and fairer rules. I hope we can achieve that and I think it is the way we should go and I think it is achievable, but there are forces out there in all our countries that are leaning in another direction and we could go backwards to more protectionism, and that is the big blocs and the big countries looking after their own interests, and that we know from what happened in the 1930s could be a very dangerous development.

  361. Alec Erwin said, did he not, that some of the protesters exhibit what, from our perspective, will end up as being a straight protectionist position, so whatever they may dress that up as, it does not take away from the fact that this is an attempt to protect their lifestyle or their economy; this is perfectly legitimate. That just sums it up.
  (Clare Short) For me, the point is young people in Seattle wearing Nike trainers with mobile phones who organise their demonstrations on the Internet and fly in, living the comfortable life of citizens of the kind of countries we live in with access to modern technology and all the fruits of multinational capital which organises the use of that technology for us, trying to protect the poor of the world from many of the fruits of it.

  Chairman: I think your answer is, Secretary of State, it is a problem, but we do not know quite how to deal with it.

Ms King

  362. I am very interested in what you just said really. Mr Erwin also said, "I think a great deal of attention has to be paid to how you deal with the legitimate concerns of your own civil society", and I think maybe that is where we need to differentiate between NGOs and the home-grown indigenous NGO networks, the role of DFID in civil society and capacity-building there, and the good NGOs operating out of Britain, Europe, et cetera, who see themselves as pure facilitators to that process, not necessarily speaking on behalf of or doing pure advocacy on behalf of, but enabling both governments and civil society in developing countries to have a role and have a voice in anything like the WTO. I think there are two very distinct types of NGO operating there, one which claims to speak on behalf of people in effect and one which sees itself as actually working in partnership with governments and civil society in countries. I do not know whether you agree with that or not.
  (Clare Short) I do agree with that and I repeat that there are lots of people of extremely good intent working in and supporting development NGOs and there is a move now to try and facilitate the building of the voices of the people themselves rather than speak on their behalf. However, nonetheless, to run an NGO you need a profile and you need to raise funds and the way you get your name in the media is to attack things. Certainly in the preparation for Seattle, as we became more and more engaged and more and more worried about what was going to happen and invited in British development NGOs and talked about what we were doing, we tried to peel them off—this is to put it crudely—an alliance that was already there, driven more by the environmental NGOs which was very hostile, there was some adjustment and some movement, so there are lots of good people, but fashions run, the media runs, all are very powerful and in the end to be a successful NGO, you have got to have your name in the papers and that pulls in another direction.

Chairman

  363. In the initial memorandum that the Department submitted to us, it mentions the apprehensions which many developing countries feel about the new Round of trade negotiations. Mike Moore, the Director of the WTO, speaking at the end of the May meeting of the General Council, unveiled a number of "confidence-building measures" designed to raise the confidence of developing countries in the multilateral trading system. These proposals included an offer of tariff and quota-free access for "essentially all products", a series of special sessions of the General Council on implementation issues, a commitment to give "positive consideration" to individual requests to roll over implementation deadlines, and a commitment for increased technical assistance. Are any of these proposals new and do you feel that this package will be sufficient to build the confidence of developing countries? Could it not be argued that this package, excluding, as it does, sensitive agricultural goods, could actually undermine confidence in the WTO as regards its commitment to least developed countries? What is being excluded by the "essentially all" caveat?
  (Clare Short) I think the agreement to give better trade access to least developed countries, which was a call originally made by Mr Ruggiero, the response has been disappointing in that there have been exclusions by country after country or blocs, the Japanese, American and of course the EU with their tantalising "essentially all", which means the offer is less generous than we would have hoped and needs continual working, and we need in the EU to get on with defining what we mean by "essentially all" because there are deep protectionist policies within the EU and clearly there will be a fight about that, so although the EU is committed to implementing this anyway, still determining exactly what is included is an important piece of work which has not yet been undertaken. John, do you have anything to add to that?
  (Mr Roberts) Yes, Secretary of State. Pascal Lamy, the Commissioner for Trade, briefed the European Parliament last week on this. He had been in consultation with his colleague, Franz Fischler, the Commissioner for Agriculture, and what he is reported as saying is that he wanted to make progress in the agricultural field and opening the EU market to imports in the least developed, and that the hard core of difficult products consisted of beef, rice and sugar.

  364. I thought sugar might be amongst them.
  (Clare Short) There are real problems because of the Lome and access which is guaranteed over time will clearly be phased out, so the EU has got some genuine problems given its other commitments on the commodity protocols, but Lamy has grasped this agenda and I believe it has become clearer and clearer, the need for developing countries to make gains from the Round, but we will have to get agreement from all the Member States and that will not be a simple process and it is something that the Committee might want to keep an eye on. The Bangladeshi Minister or representative in Geneva, the Chair for the least developed group, did express some disappointment about the package on access for the least developed countries, but I think the agreement that was reached to review implementation of Uruguay and to look genuinely at countries that have not been able to implement all the undertakings they have made, and really have not and need more help and need more time, I think that has brought a lot of relief to developing countries who just took on more than they knew they were taking on and just have not had the capacity to implement it and were worried that deadlines were approaching and they could then be open to penalty. So I think that agreement in Geneva to review implementation has been very welcome and helped the atmospherics that that was part of a package that would really assist developing countries. I think developing countries are keen on more transparency internally. Everyone understands that if you are going to have negotiations and a final deal, you cannot have all 136 countries at the table, but you have got to have representatives of different groups that report back to their groups so that you have got a proper process and everyone is engaged, and I think there is more and more consensus on that and that is the way that will go. Then, finally, developing countries are not at all keen on what is called external transparency because they think it is going to go back to NGOs speaking on their behalf. Obviously we all want things to be published and just more open and scrutinised, but there is a reluctance amongst developing countries because they fear that their voices are going to be squashed by those other voices about which we talked. Have I missed anything out?
  (Mr Roberts) The special review mechanism which was agreed by the General Council is regarded as very important. It was mooted at the time of Seattle, but not agreed then and this will indeed provide an ongoing mechanism means for—
  (Clare Short) That is the work on implementation, which I think has meant that that is the most important gain developing countries have made and that means they are less discontented than you might otherwise expect because they see that as extremely important, and a bit of good faith for their real problems.

  365. So you do see these measures as building confidence in the developing countries in WTO, do you?
  (Clare Short) I think, firstly, I agree very much with Alec Erwin, that developing countries do believe in the WTO and that is why they joined it. In Bangkok, at the UNCTAD meeting in Bangkok, it was very clear that developing countries understand that the smaller, weaker economies are going to get justice out of a membership organisation with rules and if that does not survive, then the big countries and the big economies will bully everyone else and that clearly must be less good for developing countries, but I think they are slightly overwhelmed by just the pure technical detail and the difficulty of negotiating and complying, but I think in the present atmospherics, the agreement to review implementation is very, very important to developing countries and has made them feel better.

  366. When do you see these discussions really getting down to business and the implementation taking place?
  (Clare Short) I think what we need is a bit of a kind of case-by-case look at countries that generally have not been able to implement commitments they undertook in Uruguay, looking at their difficulties, looking at the technical assistance they need to be able to do so and giving them realistic timescales, so I think we need a kind of fair objective look mechanism, which does expect everyone to comply, but is realistic about the capacity of countries to comply and the help they need in order to get there, and I hope we will get to that sort of process quite soon.
  (Mr Roberts) We are making a start with TRIMs which are the General Council's specific decision to consider this sensitively and to defer any action.

  367. When will you begin TRIMs?
  (Mr Roberts) I do not know the exact timetable for consideration of this, but the Council decided that implementation of TRIMs would be a high priority for consideration.
  (Clare Short) But I think again that should be driven forward and it is urgent because, otherwise, dates where countries are supposed to complete their compliance with Uruguay will kick in and, without some exceptions being made, they become liable to sanctions, so it has got its own timetable and it has to be driven forward, otherwise we get all those problems and that would really damage the WTO and any prospects of another Round.

Mr Rowe

  368. I wonder if we could be reminded of the scale of this so-called concession to the LDCs in relation to the size of the EU economy. We have heard some absolutely minute figures being used.
  (Clare Short) Yes, the least developed countries make up 0.4 per cent of world trade—tiny, tiny, tiny amounts. These are the poorest countries in the world. You would think that everyone could just open up their economies and help them to trade and then of course there would be more attractive destinations for investment and that would help them grow their economies. Surely that is both right morally and in all our interests to get a more stable world and more trade and so on, but look at the process then. Country by country, powerful, wealthy economies start paring away some of the access—it is very disappointing—so you see the difference between the rhetoric on liberalisation and trade, especially from the big economies, and then in practice when you get down to some of the detail, but that is the reality that we are working with.

Chairman

  369. When do you think the Ruggiero proposals are actually going to be implemented?
  (Clare Short) Well, the commitment that has now been made by the US, Japan, the Quad, and of course countries like Switzerland and Korea and Poland have said they will do it too, I presume will be implemented quite soon, but they do not allow much more access than countries have at the moment. In terms of the EU, we have already discussed that. It is committed to implementing anyway regardless of what happens during the WTO by 2005, but starting the process in the year 2000 and we need to move the EU on and get down to the detail on what is "essentially all" and start the process, and I think we all need to press the EU much more firmly.

  370. And that is rice, beef and sugar?
  (Clare Short) Well, Commissioner Lamy has said that those are the obvious exceptions. That is not the same as getting all the Member States to agree and we must as a Government, we must all, and it would also be good to have the Committee's help to press that agenda forward and get the EU to agree to start the process.

Ms King

  371. You mentioned the Head of the Bangladeshi mission to the WTO in Geneva, Abdul Mannan, who I think has made an impressive contribution to this debate. When we met him in Geneva, he cited many of the failures that the WTO had had, but he also said that, in his view, "If there is a lack of legitimacy, then we, the developing countries, have contributed to it as much as anyone else". Do you think there is any way or how do you think the developing countries could improve their own performance?
  (Clare Short) I think what we are seeing is a process of historical change and many developing countries, after their independence, were working with a model of a very powerful state driving economic development, with the support of development thinking in industrialised countries that did look to a closed economy with quite a lot of protection and the idea that you build up your infant industries behind protectionist barriers. That has proved to be, just by pure economic history, a desperately flawed model which has led in many countries to the population growing faster than the economy and, therefore, the invincible growth of poverty and the crumbling of public services. I think we are all, whatever our original point in the political spectrum, having to adjust our mind-set to the changes that are taking place in the world and that process is going on in developing countries amongst their politicians, their technical people in their trade ministries and their public opinion, so there is that general problem that we all have and share and we need to move forward the world's mind as to how we manage this globalising era more beneficially and overcome some of the old stereotypes, and that is part of the problem. Some of the rhetoric from developing countries in Geneva has been, "Please don't do this to me" rather than the positive agenda that developing countries need to agree about what they want, they take into the next Round and of course if they agree on it, they will get it, which is very much the Alec Erwin approach and is much more likely to produce real fruits for developing countries, and then on top of that there are real problems. A country like Bangladesh, it might be a very poor country, but it is a big country and it can support its mission in Geneva much more than some of the very small, poor African countries which are just tinier countries with much smaller government machines and people with very little back-up, and that is a problem that we have got to sort in our arrangements, collective secretarial help, and I do hope our forthcoming White Paper on globalisation and development will help with some of this. We have got to move the mind-set of the world on in order to start to have a serious discussion about how we manage globalisation in a way which will be equitable and stable and just for developing countries, and I think all of our countries have got this problem and all our public opinions.

  Chairman: I think I will ask Nigel Jones to ask the next questions on the outcome of the WTO Council, some of which have been dealt with.

Mr Jones

  372. We have had two meetings of the General Council this year, on the 8th February and the 3rd May. How satisfied are you with the outcome and progress made concerning measures in favour of the developing countries because progress does seem to have been painfully slow?
  (Clare Short) We have discussed it. I think the mini-package on implementation is good, as we said, and now we need to get on with it, and that won a lot of goodwill. The market access for least developed countries is disappointing. We need to keep pushing and we need to push the EU to do more than the minimum, and that is our own responsibility. I think personally that the views of developing countries to the package and post the Bangkok UNCTAD are very positive. I know that Alec Erwin thinks that what is going on in Geneva is getting bogged down—I saw him when I was in South Africa just recently—but those are not the reports that I get back, so it could be a lot better, but the atmospherics are quite good and the implementation commitment is very important.

Mr Robathan

  373. I would like to ask about changes to the negotiating position of the EU in the light of events in Seattle and subsequently. Firstly, what aspects do you think should be changed, if any, and, in particular, are you happy with the current EU negotiating position on agriculture? You will know that agriculture is the one which is brought up the whole time by developing countries, and I think quite rightly. Alec Erwin, if I might quote what he said last week, said, "...the European Union has to change its agricultural policy...this is a matter of massive concern to developing countries. It is an obstacle to growth for the developing world".
  (Clare Short) We worked quite hard on getting an EU negotiating position that we as a Government supported and we had a big struggle on trade and labour, as we know, when we got an outcome that we thought we could live with, and we also very much wanted the EU support for the comprehensive Round both because we believed that progress on competition and investment policy would be beneficial to the developing countries and because we need a broad Round to get a deal so that all parties are getting something, so that was a satisfactory part of the EU negotiating mandate. On agriculture, as you know, the EU has difficulties on this. It is the position of the UK that we want major reform and we welcome the fact that the EU is extending its membership and that the piece clause is going to become exhausted on agricultural protection under Uruguay in 2003, so there has to be progress. Also, it is widely known that we as a country want to go further than we can get the other Member States to agree on agriculture, but we think there are historical forces at work that will drive major agricultural reform and the EU will not be able to afford the level of agricultural subsidy as it widens its membership; the finances just do not add up. Also we have got the WTO as another ally in getting sensible agricultural reform. So it is the most difficult area, there is no doubt, but we saw in Seattle when some negotiation was going on some flexibility, and of course there are politics within the politics in the WTO and some of the other big economic blocs that did not want a more comprehensive Round were saying, "Ah, the reason the EU wants to include investment and competition is anything but agriculture", whereas we believe there should be a comprehensive Round, agriculture must be included and it is the most difficult for the EU, as we well know as a country, and we want the EU to go as far as it can possibly be pushed to go. I believe with Alec Erwin that this is important for developing countries, although developing countries have adjusted to the existing distortions in agricultural trade in the world, so as barriers come down to agricultural trade, there will be winners and losers amongst developing countries, so developing countries have got into the niches of existing arrangements. Obviously what developing countries need to do is do more processing of their food in order to get more value added in their imports and that is where Africa needs to move, and then I think as food is more processed, it hits more tariff barriers and that is a very important issue for developing countries. However, let me just finally add that all the research evidence is clear that a reduction in tariffs on manufacturing would also be highly beneficial to developing countries, so yes, agriculture, but manufacturing is important to them too and in south-south trade in manufacturing, there are very high tariffs and bringing them down would bring economic growth to developing countries.

  374. I wish I shared your confidence that enlargement of the EU must inevitably lead to a proper reform of the agricultural policy, but I do not want to get too bogged down too far in that, but—
  (Clare Short) It is just the finances, it is a very optimistic thing. Look at these countries with big agricultural sectors, Poland, Hungary and so on; if they are all going to have a Common Agricultural Policy and all be subsidised, the finances just will not add up, so that is going to drive change in a way that we as a country think is highly beneficial for the agricultural reform we want anyway.

  Chairman: And the effect on world commodity prices would be drastic for the developing world, would it not, with huge exports of subsidised sugar, wheat, barley, et cetera?

Mr Robathan

  375. I think we come at this from the same way, but I am somewhat less sanguine about the changes made—
  (Clare Short) Let me agree that the barriers to reform are huge, but I think there are objective forces coming out of the bottle that are going to drive reform. That is the optimistic scenario.

  376. You have mentioned the UK getting the EU to do more than the minimum. How possible do you think realistically it is for the UK to get the EU to do more than the minimum and is not the trade agreement between the EU and South Africa rather a bad precedent for this?
  (Clare Short) Yes, I think the trade agreement with South Africa shows all the sort of begrudging, protectionist interests that are alive and working in the EU, so countries trying to prevent the import of fruit that is produced at a different time of year than their own fruit, it is absolutely contrary to any opportunities for enlarged agriculture, and it has been a very painful process. I think it demonstrates very powerfully the value of multilateral trade negotiations because if it is country by country and individual developing country against a very wealthy bloc, it is a supplicant, whereas if you put all the developing countries together and wealthy countries will not change, they are in a much more powerful position to get some gains for developing countries out of the agreement and I think that might be one of the reasons why Alec Erwin is so clear about the value of multilateral trade negotiations. How can we get the EU to do more than the minimum? The EU is committed (and was it part of the Lome mandate or was that agreed beforehand?) to zero-tariff access on essentially all products for the least developed countries whether anyone else moves or not and was committed, quite apart from the confidence-building measures, in the WTO and, as I said earlier, we are supposed to start phasing it in by the end of this year and it is supposed to be completed by 2005, and we should drive that and get on with it, put a lot of pressure on the EU to be generous and get on with it quickly. I think the other issue is the phasing out of the multi-fibre agreements quite rapidly, and that is coming to the table quite quickly. It is very important to developing countries and the EU is about to adopt a position. Is that right?
  (Mr Roberts) The next stage, the third stage of removing textile and clothing products from the quota, putting them into the general WTO regime, is scheduled for the 1st January 2002 and the European Union must now get its act together to decide what it is going to take out of quota and put into the WTO regime for that deadline of 1st January 2002.
  (Clare Short) It is an issue the Committee might want to keep an eye on because the EU has got to start preparing its position now.

Chairman

  377. Is there a long list of these products?
  (Mr Roberts) Yes, there is, and I forget how many groups of products and the position has been hitherto that those groups of products which, on the whole, have not been very helpful to developing countries have been taken out of quota and that leaves groups of products which are of keen interest to developing countries, trousers, shirts, blouses and so forth, which are still subject to quota.

  378. Do you think, Secretary of State, that we could have a list of those that have got to be taken out of quota by 2002? I think it would be very useful to the Committee.
  (Clare Short) It is a very important issue.

  Chairman: I think it would be useful to have it if we could.[1]

Ms King

  379. The Brazilian Ambassador to the WTO has suggested that a new Round is in effect under way, given the fact that there are, firstly, negotiations going on with regard to agriculture and services and, secondly, the whole range of issues that are being discussed within the Implementation Group. If that is the case, what would you say are the prospects now for a broad Round going ahead?
  (Clare Short) Under the Uruguay Round, there was agreement to the built-in agenda, as it is called, to come back to agriculture and services, so that is what is going on; it was bound under Uruguay and those negotiations have started. Then, as we have said earlier, there has been this agreement to review the implementation of Uruguay and have more flexibility for countries that have not been able to implement all their commitments, so that is presumably the point that the Brazilian Ambassador is making and that is good and the work should go on. However, I am convinced myself that we will not get major gains, particularly on something like agriculture, without the more comprehensive Round so that all blocs are making gains and, therefore, they will make concessions, so that work should go on, but I would not be optimistic on a very difficult issue like agriculture taken alone and that is not part of a comprehensive Round. But I do hope that we will get agreement to get on with the Round and broaden it in order to get the conditions for political agreement.


1   See Evidence pp. 169-172. Back


 
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