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WASHINGTON : World Bank president Robert Zoellick on Monday said a disputed farm safeguard proposal that torpedoed WTO Doha Round international trade talks needs limits, and urged negotiations to resume.
"Given the high food prices around the world and the need for poor people to lower their cost of food, it just does not make sense for the Doha negotiations to founder upon this barrier," Zoellick said.
Zoellick said that major trade partners need to return to the negotiating table to find a compromise to the proposed special safeguard, agricultural tariffs demanded by developing nations to protect their farmers.
The World Trade Organisation's Doha Round of talks collapsed in late July, dealing a potentially devastating blow to millions of the world's poor.
"Working with WTO director general Pascal Lamy, the United States, India, and China should come up with a compromise," Zoellick, the American president of the poverty-fighting development institution, said.
"Brazil, a developing country that is both a major agricultural exporter and home to many poor farmers, can help. Indonesia and Australia may be in a position to contribute to a solution too."
The Doha Round talks were abandoned due to a row between India and the US over a so-called special safeguard mechanism allowing nations to impose a special tariff on agricultural goods if imports surge or prices fall.
India and other developing countries wanted the mechanism to kick in at a lower import surge level to protect their millions of poor farmers.
The US refused to accept Indian proposals that developing nations should be allowed to boost duties by an additional 25 percent on farm products if imports surged by 15 percent.
Washington insisted extra duties should be allowed only if imports rose by 40 percent.
Zoellick offered several suggestions to make a farm safeguard doable.
Noting that it can take two or more years to challenge the grounds for imposing a safeguard, in which time the new barrier blocks trade, Zoellick said: "A compromise could create a speedy due process for challenges, without appeal."
The World Bank president said that all parties seemed to agree that safeguards should not be imposed to block normal trade flows, but they disagree on how much of a change warrants the temporary protection of a safeguard.
An acceptable way for a country to determine whether a safeguard is justified, "could require examination of factors in addition to increased trade flows."
"Under current WTO practice, the economy imposing a safeguard decides how much protection is appropriate. But this protection could be disciplined and limited," he said. - AFP/de
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