Another Ministerial Draft

Geneva A revised draft ministerial text for this month's World Trade Organization's sixth ministerial conference in Hong Kong was circulated to members yesterday, including new language on "parallel elimination" of all forms of export subsidies and bracketed language on an "early harvest" of trade-related measures for four West African cotton producing countries (WTD, 12/1/05).

There was opposition from the European Union and African members who had demanded that the situational reports prepared by the chairpersons of the agriculture and nonagricultural market access negotiating groups should not be included with the ministerial declaration. The latest revision includes both reports as annexes A and B.

The appended texts prepared by the Doha Development Agenda services negotiations Chairman Fernando De Mateo include a new effort toward plurilateral negotiations in an effort to galvanize the faltering talks.

The revised draft reveals there is no agreement yet on "duty-free/quota-free" market access for least developed countries.

Except for the three changes, the rest of the ministerial draft is the same as offered by WTO Director General Pascal Lamy last Saturday.

Marathon "green room" meetings held over the past three days to produce the draft saw continued sharp exchanges on the "cotton initiative" between Benin and the United States. There also was disagreement on how to deal with annexes on agriculture and NAMA. The EU and the United States disputed the need to include an end date for eliminating agricultural export subsidies in the draft document.

Some Surprises Expected

But trade envoys agreed that the revised draft is bound to produce some surprises at Hong Kong forcing either the EU to announce an end date of 2013 for eliminating export subsidies or the United States agreeing to some palliatives for the cotton producing West African countries, according to sources here.

During a "green room" session Wednesday night, Benin pushed hard for an early harvest of trade-related measures on cotton, WTD was told. Benin's trade minister, Dj