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Kathmandu Monday August 27, 2001 Bhadra 11, 2058.
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SAARC ministers reach
consensus
Post Report
KATHMANDU, Aug 26 - SAARC Commerce Ministers
in New Delhi last Thursday decided to forge a common front for the World Trade
Organization (WTO) ministerial conference to be held at Doha in November this year.
According to the Media Reports, the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Commerce Ministers issued a joint
statement after their meeting to emphasize that "implementation issues" which
are a fallout of the Uruguay Round agreements must be resolved upfront without any
extraneous linkages.
The resolution of these implementation issues
seems to provide a "sufficiently broad agenda for now," it added. The Commerce
Ministers agreed that any move to add further issues runs the risk of over-loading the
agenda and making it unsustainable, according to the statement at an Internet site.
Pakistani Commerce Minister Abdul Razzak, Sri
Lankan Commerce Minister Batty Weerakoon, Nepalese Agriculture Minister Mahesh Acharya and
SAARC General Secretary Nihal Rodrigo were amongst those who attended the meeting hosted
by India’s Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran, it is learnt.
Pakistan’s Commerce Minister reportedly
said that SAARC would strive to rope in other developing countries and
"like-minded" countries to put up a united stand at the WTO ministerial meeting
in Doha.
Razzak added that there is unanimity among
SAARC countries about the need to effectively safeguard their interests in trade related
areas before any step is taken to broaden the agenda to include non-trade issues like
labor and environment.
Expressing similar views, Sri Lanka’s
Commerce Minister is also said to have said, "We have reached full understanding on
the position to be taken at Doha meeting".
The joint statement issued by the SAARC
Commerce Ministers offers a possible way out of the impasse on the agenda for the Doha
Ministerial meet of the WTO in November, say experts here.
Without compromising on the demand voiced by
the developing countries that implementation of the existing WTO agreements be accorded
primacy at Doha, the SAARC ministers have hinted at a possible conditional acceptance of
the proposal for a new round of trade talks.
However, Bangladesh was absent during the talks.
Bangladesh is known to have supported the developed countries’ call for a new round
largely because the least developed countries have borne the brunt of the adverse effects
of the Uruguay Round agreements.
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