India would soon hold crucial high-level talks with the US and the European Union in an attempt to save the World Trade Organisation?s Doha Round negotiations from collapsing. The decision, taken by India, US and the EU to go in for separate discussions, comes in the backdrop of the recent allegations of the US that India was preventing the successful conclusion of Doha talks.
Official sources said these separate meetings between commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath, US trade representative Susan Schwab and the EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson to be held later this week, ?will be decisive for the conclusion of the Doha Development Round.?
In the US, Nath is also scheduled to hold wide-ranging meetings with Carlos M Gutierrez, secretary of the US department of commerce, Henry M Paulson Jr, secretary of the treasury, and Max Sieben Baucus, the influential US senator from Montana and significantly a Democrat. Baucus is the tenth longest-serving current Senator and has the experience of being in the Senate Agriculture Committee, Subcommittee on International Trade and Global Competitiveness and also as the chairman of the US Senate committee on finance.
While in the UK, he is slated to meet Mandelson and UK trade and investment minister Digby Jones. These meetings, as they are being held just prior to the ministerial level meeting is being planned at the WTO in this month-end or next month, are also aimed at sensitising the US, the EU and also UK on India?s concerns. Sources said India would ensure that its interests in agriculture, industrial goods and services are protected.
Recently Christopher Padilla, the US under secretary of commerce for international trade, had said India?s refusal to significantly liberalise its markets in industrial goods and in agriculture, while at the same time demanding the developed nations to come up with better offers, could result in the failure of the Round.
Developing nations, including India, have been demanding the developed countries to reduce their ?trade distorting? farm subsidies and open up their markets for goods and services from developing countries. While the developed nations, on the other hand, have been pressing for more market access in the developing countries.
India had earlier described the WTO revised negotiating text on industrial goods as one designed primarily to help the developed countries gain more market access in the developing world and had called for a complete revision of the text. Nath had criticised the sharp increase in the number of square brackets in the text on industrial goods (indicating the number of points of differences) from 15 to 97 and said significant convergence achieved before taking the matter for deliberation at the ministerial level.
On the text on agriculture, India had noted that the Agriculture Chair has managed to reduce the number of square brackets from 130 to 30. Officials said ?though we have some concerns, this text is good enough for further negotiations as our numbers, concerns and position is very much reflected in the revised negotiating text.? However, India is concerned that the agricultural text has proposed fewer number of products that developing nations including India can protect from unrestricted imports from agro exporting majors like Australia, US and Canada. India also reiterated its pitch for more ?real? market access in the services sector, particularly in outsourcing and movement of natural persons or service suppliers, in the developed country markets, as these two are of interest to India