Hong Kong 13-18 Dec. 2005

The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference  
Hong Kong, China, 13 to 18 December 2005.

World Trade Organisation members regrouped Tuesday at the body's headquarters, a day after the US and EU won little support for subsidy-cutting plans aimed at kick-starting talks on liberalising international commerce.

A gathering of trading nations in Zurich Monday did little to break the enduring deadlock in the WTO's four-year-old Doha Round negotiations.

Officials have warned that failure in meetings this week could jeopardise the WTO's crucial summit in Hong Kong, which is meant to draft a multilateral accord cutting subsidies, customs duties and other barriers to world trade.

With the summit just over 60 days away, the 148 trading nations in the WTO are desperate to avoid a replay of their 2003 bust-up at a summit in Cancun, Mexico, which mired their talks for more than a year.

At the Zurich talks, which brought together around 15 WTO members, a proposal by US Trade Representative Rob Portman received an angry reception from Japan, and was met with caution by developing countries including India and Brazil.

Japan rejected the US plan on grounds that it would not go far enough in reducing Washington's assistance to its agricultural sector. Tokyo said it would come up with an alternative proposal later this week in Geneva, where the WTO is holding more talks.

Portman's plan calls for a 60 percent cut in the subsidies Washington is allowed to pay its farmers under WTO rules and an 83 percent reduction by the European Union and Japan. The EU and Japanese cuts should be higher because they are currently allowed more payouts, he argued.

The variant proposed by the EU foresees a 70 percent reduction, plus a cut of up 60 percent in Brussels' customs duties on farm goods, another bone of contention.

But Japanese Agriculture Minister Mineichi Iwanaga told reporters: "Japan is not able to accept the US proposal on domestic support as a basis for further discussion because the extent of the reduction the US is willing to make on its own domestic support is insufficient, in our view."

Japan is among countries seeking to protect their farmers from far-reaching liberalisation in the WTO talks.