India, Malaysia Forge G-15 Consensus On Trade Issues

Heads of state and government from Egypt, India, Senegal, Jamaica, Malaysia, Zimbabwe and Algeria, vice-presidents from Argentina and Brazil and representatives of Chile, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru and Venezuela gathered here yesterday and sought to infuse new life into South-South cooperation that many had assumed had had its day with the end of the Cold War.

There was not a single voice of dissent, external affairs minister I K Gujral later told Indian journalists, as he described the support of each leader from Asia, Africa and Latin America for an open, liberal and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system that the GATT-WTO had promised.

 

Speaking at a closed-door plenary session, prime minister H D Deve Gowda called for the G-15 to stoutly resist any efforts by nations to introduce new and unrelated issues into the WTO. We cannot allow their agenda to be imposed on us, Gowda said.

The effort to impose multilateral regimes in some areas like investments would need ton be resisted and we need to send a strong message from this meeting. We cherish our sovereignty and would not countenance efforts by some to unilaterally impose regimes which have extra-territorial implications, he added.

Calling for an abandonment of passivity and indifference to the unequal economic and political environment in which our voice is sought to be stifled and made feeble, the prime minister said, we in the G-15 in fact need to work together to initiate a global exercise for a new generalised system of preferences in our favour.

Malaysian prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, earlier speaking as the Asian spokesman at the inaugural session, was equally direct: we find one country blatantly undermining the WTO by enacting in total disregard for international norms. We just cannot submit to such unilateral measures of coercion. Developing countries must reject this challenge to their sovereign right to be free to trade and invest wherever they wish...

The evolving joint communique, an Indian official said, was turning out to be a surprise, because even the Latin American leaders had agreed that G-15 be used as a means of getting together a developing country perspective on the WTO.

Gowdas surprisingly blunt speech, referring to the social dimensions of growth seemed out of a different era, but sources said it should be seen in the light of the WTO meeting in Singapore next month, where India is sure to come under fire on the multilateral agreement on investment (MAI), the social clause, laws against bribery corruption in public procurement and technology transfer agreements. Accusing the WTO for failing to provide increased market access to developing countries, the prime minister said, we will not agree to any attempts at compressing the time-frame under the WTO.

An Indian official explained that some countries like the US are not only seeking reduced time-frames on TRIPS and TRIMS as per their early harvest concepts, but were now seeking to pressurise countries like India into reducing the 10-year transition period accepted by GATT to move into the free trading world.

The message of the prime minister is that we cannot make the system more onerous than it already is today, he said.

Earlier, president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and host of the summit, set the tone of the summit saying it provided the opportunity to fashion common cause on issues to be discussed at WTO. This deliberate and expansive interpretation of the WTOs remit needs to be checked. We do not think it is prudent to burden the WTO with new issues whilst we are yet to implement in full the agreed ones, Mugabe said.

Interestingly, even the Latin American leaders, who have in the last two summits been somewhat cool and distant to the idea of South-South cooperation, yesterday warned towards the vision but in their inimitable way.