S&D TALKS ADJOURN EARLY AMIDST DISAGREEMENT

WTO Members continued to debate the order in which to address agreement-specific and cross-cutting issues related to special and differential treatment (S&D) for developing countries during a meeting of the Committee on Trade and Development Special (negotiating) Session (CTD-SS) scheduled for 6-7 April. The meeting was cut short because some countries, led by India, were not interested in accepting an agenda that, in their view, did not give sufficient priority to the agreement-specific S&D proposals.

Sources report that Chair Faizel Ismail of South Africa built upon his earlier idea for organising the work of the CTD-SS (see BRIDGES Weekly, 9 February 2005), by classifying both agreement-specific proposals and cross-cutting issues into two broad categories -- flexibility and capacity building. Reportedly, the agenda he suggested would have had Members spend the rest of the two-day meeting on the proposals in the "flexibility" category, with the remaining time on the first day devoted to the agreement-specific proposals and the entire second day to cross-cutting issues. The agenda would have dedicated the next CTD-SS meeting, scheduled for the week of 10 May, to the agreement-specific and cross-cutting issues that fell into the "capacity building" category.

Several developing countries, including India, Malaysia, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, said that they had not been adequately consulted about this classification and expressed fears that structuring work along those lines would shift negotiations towards cross-cutting issues instead of ensuring that Members focus their attention on the agreement-specific proposals. They argued that the July Package (WT/L/579) requires concrete recommendations for the problems highlighted in the agreement-specific proposals by July 2005, while the mandate for cross-cutting issues calls only for 'reporting' to the General Council at an unspecified date. Some countries said that, for now, the CTD-SS should focus solely on agreement-specific proposals, giving priority to those submitted by least developed countries, and should only move to discussions of cross-cutting issues once some progress has been made on the agreement front.

Other Members, including several developed countries, continued to argue that the cross-cutting issues were central to the negotiations and as such had to be included either before or at the same time as talks on the agreement-specific proposals. Canada suggested a "middle way" in which Members moved forward with negotiations on agreement-specific proposals but with the freedom to propose cross-cutting solutions. The need to clarify the relationship between the two elements of the negotiations and find common ground will be a priority in the informal consultations that are tentatively scheduled for 14 April.

ICTSD reporting.