Aid, Labor Groups Say WTO Deal Betrays Poor

Development aid, labor union and human rights groups on Monday blasted as "betrayal" and abuse of the poor a World Trade Organization (WTO) deal in Hong Kong to keep troubled open market talks afloat.

And reacting to a deal that came only after a European Union promise to end agricultural export subsidies in six years, European farmers declared it "one-sided" and skewed against them -- and against extremely poor countries.

The accord, reached earlier in the day after 100 hours of haggling and histrionics by trade ministers from the WTO's 149 member countries, "sentences small farmers, workers and communities across the developing world to desperate poverty," said the British-based War on Want.

The agreement, said aid group Oxfam International, is "a betrayal of development promises by rich countries, whose interests have prevailed yet again."

It will "roll back the enjoyment of human rights around the world" by putting stable food supplies and health services at risk for the poor, said a coalition of 50 rights groupings.

In a statement issued from its Brussels headquarters, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) said the Hong Kong outcome "is another blow to employment and sustainable development."

The conference final text, effectively doing little more than keeping open negotiations into next year for a new global trade pact in the WTO's Doha Round, "ignores the urgent need to improve the lives of working people," the ICFTU said.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

The text included a deadlock-breaking pledge from the EU to end farm export subsidies -- the top demand of developing countries -- by 2013. But development campaigners dismissed this as "smoke and mirrors."

The deal was cooked up by an "unholy alliance" of the United States, the European Union and WTO head Pascal Lamy, a former EU trade chief, said the Asia-based Focus on the Global South.

But the grouping, head by Philippine economist Walden Bello, also attacked India and Brazil, leaders of the G20 developing country group that emerged at a failed WTO conference in 2003, for their role in Hong Kong.

"India and Brazil have led the developing countries down the garden path in exchange for some market access in agriculture for Brazil, and services outsourcing for India," said the grouping's spokesperson Aileen Kwa.

"This text is a recipe for disaster, and many developing countries will not be able to convince people back home that they have come back with a good deal," Bello said.

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and India's Trade Minister Kamal Nath -- who represented the G20 in talks with the EU and the United States before and during the conference -- were swapping compliments about what they had achieved "to cover up the fact that they have agreed to a disaster," he said.

The main European farmers' grouping, Brussels-based COPA-COGECA, whose political representatives were under heavy pressure to end subsidies, said they would fight on for a better deal for them and "the most needy developing countries."

This was another clear barb at India and Brazil, accused by some in the EU -- and echoed by the Global South's Bello -- of primarily pursuing their own interests as large, middle-income trading powers at the expense of really poor nations.

###