India for 'chair-driven' process to break Doha deadlock

India wants the chair for Doha agriculture negotiations, Ambassador Crawford Falconer, to oversee the senior official-level talks for breaking the deadlock on all contentious farm issues, Business Standard was told.

As fresh efforts are mounted to convene the stalled Doha trade talks, India told World Trade Organization’s director general Pascal Lamy that it is comfortable with a “chair-driven” process to address the difficult issues.

In a recent report, the chair said while the talks broke down on what ought to be the triggers and remedies for using special safeguard mechanism (SSM) to curb unforeseen farm imports in developing countries, there are other issues that could prove to be deal breakers.

These include steep reduction of cotton subsidies, simplification of farm tariffs and a framework for expansion of tariff rate quotas for sensitive farm products in industrialised countries. Ambassador Falconer also said that members had not yet vetted the issues where progress was made.

After his visit to Washington last week, the WTO chief is understood to have told Commerce Minister Kamal Nath that the US trade representative, Ambassador Susan Schwab, is “hungry” for an early agreement, suggesting that senior officials can resume the meeting to address SSM and other issues.

But Lamy did not indicate what will be Falconer’s role in the upcoming talks next month, sources said.

Schwab is understood to have indicated that Washington will prefer a new grouping that also includes India for addressing the most difficult issues such as SSM but there is not clarity yet on who ought to be the new members, sources added.

It is also not clear whether the G-7 members — the US, the European Union, Japan, India, Brazil, China, and Australia — will be further expanded to include some other farm exporting countries like Uruguay, Malaysia, and Indonesia, among others, sources said.

Meanwhile, Australia has prepared a confidential proposal on SSM to enable the director-general to hammer out differences among key members.