Geneva, July 29 - A row between developing countries at global trade talks over a proposal to protect farmers from surges in imports deepened on Monday, with exporters saying they would reject any deal with the measure.
The dispute threatens to torpedo make-or-break talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to save the long-running Doha round, as a delicate compromise crafted on Friday showed signs of fraying due to differences between rich and poor nations.
The special safeguard mechanism (SSM) is a proposal in the Doha round's agriculture talks designed to protect farmers in poor countries from sudden import surges or price collapses.
India's Commerce Minister Kamal Nath -- blamed by the United States for the halting progress of the talks -- has insisted that he needs such measures to protect millions of subsistence farmer in India and other developing countries.
"Developed countries are asking for flexibilities for commercial interests. The developing countries are looking to protect the poor and for provisions that will help them out of poverty," Nath told reporters on Monday. But developing country food exporters say the SSM as now proposed would shut them out of other developing country markets, depriving them of their best prospects for growth.
IMPORT GROWTH OR IMPORT SURGE
And in some cases, by allowing countries to hike tariffs over current levels, regardless of any cuts agreed in the Doha round, it could leave them worse off than today's levels agreed in the previous Uruguay round in 1994.
"My country will not accept that remedies will go back to a pre-Uruguay round state," Uruguay's ambassador to the WTO, Guillermo Valles Galmes, said.
"We have paid for that. Those agreements are sacred for us. Those agreements were finalised in 1994. Those agreements are in place, that's a balance of rights and obligations," a clearly upset Valles told a news conference.
The WTO's consensus-based system gives every country a veto.
The current round of trade talks were launched in the Qatari capital Doha in late 2001 and the previous round started in Uruguay in 1986.
Valles dismissed efforts by other WTO members to portray the SSM as an instrument to help all developing countries.
"This is not a North-South divide," he said."We are concerned with a mechanism that could impede our needs for growth, that would impede possibilities of finding a way for development, for social justice in our own countries."
Uruguay depended on agricultural exports and had no mineral resources or high-tech industries, he said. Most of its exports went to other developing countries, who were its biggest growth markets.
The mechanism as now proposed would be triggered by normal growth in trade, rather than by an import surge, he said.
Thus the mechanism would initially be triggered by a 10 percent growth in imports from a three-year base period. But import growth of only 4.9 percent a year for two years would be enough to deliver that.
The trigger for allowing tariffs to climb over Uruguay round levels would be 40 percent import growth from the base period, delivered by 18.5 percent growth for two years.
Valles said recent growth in imports to South Korea of fresh beef -- one of Uruguay's prime exports -- was 73 percent, while dairy produce had grown 38 percent. India's imports of soybean oil had risen 168 percent -- all well above the annual rate needed for the 40 percent trigger.
Paraguay also rejects the SSM because it deals with normal imports rather than emergencies, its WTO ambassador Rigoberto Gauto Vielman told the news conference.