Last WTO 'Mini-Ministerial' Meeting Before Cancun Set for July 28-30 in Montreal

11 June, 2003

Gary G. Yerkey

News and Updates

U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick plans to travel to Montreal in late July to meet with trade ministers from other members of the World Trade Organization to help pave the way for agreement on key issues such as agriculture in the ongoing WTO trade talks, sources said June 5. The sources, who asked not to be identified, said that the meeting--scheduled for July 28-30--will be the last informal 'mini-ministerial' to be held prior to the full-fledged WTO ministerial conference set for Sept. 10-14 in Cancun, Mexico.

Chairing the Montreal meeting will be Canadian International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew, who will be joined by trade ministers from about two dozen other WTO members, including European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, the sources said.

Other sources said that, meanwhile, discussion of the so-called Singapore issues was recently been added to the agenda of the mini- ministerial scheduled for June 21-22 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which Zoellick is also expected to attend.

The agenda previously had been set to deal only with opening markets to agricultural and nonagricultural products; services such as banking and insurance; access to medicines for poorer countries; and special and differential treatment for developing-country members of the WTO (20 ITR 869, 5/22/03).

But it is understood that a discussion of the Singapore issues-- investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement, and trade facilitation--was added to the agenda of the meeting at the request of, among others, the European Union and Japan, which have both called for negotiations to begin immediately on all four issues.

Many developing countries, however, including the 38 least-developed countries (LDCs) that met in Bangladesh June 2 to formulate their negotiating strategy for Cancun, have argued that they do not have the resources or expertise to begin negotiations at this time (20 ITR 952, 6/5/03).

The Singapore issues were also addressed the week of June 2 by the chairman of the WTO General Council--Carlos Perez del Castillo, of Uruguay--who called on WTO member governments to begin focusing on how to address the problem of negotiating modalities, due to be decided in Cancun (see related report, this issue ).

At the last WTO ministerial conference--held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001--trade ministers agreed to begin negotiations on the Singapore issues after the next ministerial--now set for Cancun--based on a decision to be taken at the meeting 'by explicit consensus.' (18 ITR 1814, 11/15/01)

U.S. and other government officials, in the meantime, said that the mini-ministerial being held in Montreal late next month will be critical not only because it will take place only weeks before the ministerial conference in Cancun but also because it will fall between two important WTO negotiating sessions in Geneva, Switzerland--a meeting of the General Council July 24-25 and a recently added meeting of the Negotiating Group on Market Access, now scheduled for Aug. 18-20.

Progress on market access has been highlighted as one of the principal negotiating objectives of the United States, along with agricultural reform.

The mini-ministerial in Montreal--also likely to be attended by WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi--will be one of a series of such preparatory meetings that have been held in the run-up to Cancun including one in Sydney, Australia, last November and another in Tokyo last February, along with the meeting set for Sharm el-Sheikh later this month.

By Gary G. Yerkey

International Trade ReporterVolume 20 Number 24Thursday, June 12, 2003 Page 998ISSN 1523-2816World News