negotiations, more members

WTO contender urges new negotiations, more members

NEW Zealand’s candidate for head of the World Trade Organisation, Michael Moore, suggest ed mid-January a new full round of global negotiations would be the best way to advance the cause of free trade.

In an interview with Reuters, he also said the WTO could not be a real world body unless it had China and Russia as members and that he would work for their admission, but voiced doubts about creat ing special conditions to get them in.

“Why a round is good is that there are trade-offs, there can be something for everybody,” said Moore, who is running close to Thailand’s First Deputy prime min ister Supachai Panitchpakdi in the contest to become WTO director-general.

Developing countries and former com munist transition economies had to be sure there would be something for them if they were to be convinced that they should take part in fresh liberalisation talks, he declared.

Ministers from the now 133 WTO mem ber countries are due to meet in November for a conference at which they are expected to launch new efforts to lower barriers to global commerce.

Some powers - including the European Union and Japan - want a traditional round format in which deals in several areas are combined into a single undertaking. The United States prefers a sector-by-sector approach.

Many developing countries are not keen to start up new talks in the near future apart from in agriculture and services that are already on the WTO agenda - while they are still trying to digest accords in the 1986-93 Uruguay Round.

Moore, a social democrat and former trade unionist, who has served as his coun try’s prime minister, foreign and trade min ister, said the sectoral approach, which has already produced global accords in the WTO, could be effective.

“But in the end, I think we can advance on all fronts as we 11... I can see the need for

movement in a number of areas,” he added.

Developing countries might “dig in their toes” unless they saw the prospect of bene fits to them also.

The new WTO chief, who should take over from outgoing Director-General Renato Ruggiero of Italy at the start of May, will have to steer the body through months of probably fraught negotiation on the agenda for the ministerial gathering.

Soundings taken to mid-January by two WTO ambassadors charged with establish ing which of the four candidates for the job could win a consensus, reported in December that Supachai was leading, fol lowed by Moore.

Behind them came Morocco’s former trade minister Hassan Abouyoub, and then Canada’s ex-trade minister and present High Commissioner in London, Roy Mclaren.

WTO envoys agreed to aim at a decision by the end of January with the formal appointment coming on February 16. But mid-January, the United States and the European Union had still not decided whom to back.

Moore, who travelled to nearly 50 coun tries to promote his candidature, said he felt he was “competitive”.

“We in New Zealand are little guys, we have to work harder,” he said.

Moore said it would be one of his ambi tions as director-general to bring in China, whose decade-old bid to join is faltering, and Russia, in negotiation for four years but hog-tied by the problems of its post-com munist economy.

“In the end, unless we have China and other major countries in, we don’t have a world trade organisation,” Moore added.

But if the rules were bent to admit them, as some officials have suggested, “there could be problems down the line”.

Moore said that it would also be “unfair to other countries that have not had favourable terms.

We want to engage, we want them in, but I’m cautious because we know that short cuts can end up taking longer”. ■