DEVELOPMENT: International (MRB Nov 2001): Mbeki's upbeat assessment of WTO talks comes under fire.

[MRB Nov 01] While President Thabo Mbeki has hailed this month's World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Doha, Qatar as a victory for Africa, representatives of other African countries have presented a scathing picture of SA's negotiating tactics.

Praising the decision of the Africa Group to throw its weight behind the launch of a new round of trade negotiations, Mbeki said this month that, "Africa intervened decisively to determine whether the conference succeeded or failed. Our united continent spoke at the 11th hour in favour of success".

But critics say the Africa Group "caved in" under South African pressure. "The atmosphere at the Africa Group's last meeting was very subdued," said an adviser to the caucus, who also said that SA had pushed through its position at the end.

In the run-up to Doha, SA was one of a handful of developing countries, which stood alone in its support for a new round. When the fourth ministerial conference started, the major caucuses of developing countries did not want a new round with new issues like investment and competition policy on the agenda. In addition, they wanted a significant re-balancing of the WTO rules and procedures to create more trading equity. They complained that since 1995, their institutions had been unable to implement the expensive, complex and often prejudicial trading norms established by the Uruguay Round. African countries, in the main, worked in the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) group, the Africa Group, the Least Developed Countries (LDC) lobby and in the 'Like-Minded Group' - a lobby that includes developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

In his synopsis, Mbeki said that Africa had gained at Doha by winning concessions on market access and by having the right to place public health above patent protection confirmed by the declaration on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. "Critical for agriculture is access of our products into the food markets of the developed countries, some of which continue to subsidise their own agriculture in a context that verges on intellectual, economic and social obscenity and brutal selfishness." The OECD countries spend about US$1-bn a year in agricultural subsidies. The SA president also said the WTO declaration (the document that will serve as the basis for negotiations) would advance the opening up markets to manufactured goods from developing countries. "Developing countries can intervene meaningfully within the globalisation process," he concluded.

But Ugandan delegate Yash Tandon paints a different picture. His review is that, "Africa surrendered more than it ought to have. We didn't really get anything tangible."

Tandon says the "waiver" granted by the WTO to allow the implementation of the Cotonou Agreement, the preferential trade agreement between the EU and the ACP countries, should never have been a subject of negotiations. The granting of the waiver became a bargaining chip that brought the ACP countries round to agreement. He also says that the declaration is so circumspect on the phasing out of agricultural subsidies it's almost meaningless and that African countries got ...