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Shri Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce & Industry, will be taking a tough stance on agriculture and other issues in key WTO meetings starting at Zurich and Geneva from Monday, 10th October. The Minister, who is leading the Indian delegation, is scheduled to leave on October 9 for Zurich and Geneva to participate in the Fluela Group Meeting at Zurich on October 10 and Ministerial Meetings of G-20, G-33 and Five Interested Parties (FIPS) at Geneva during 11-12, October 2005. These meetings will be followed by Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) Meeting on October 13 in Geneva.
The Ministerial engagement at the Fleula Group, FIPS, G-20, G-33 in meetings – widely being regarded as ‘make or break’ meetings - is seen as important in view of the forthcoming WTO Ministerial Conference at Hong Kong in December this year. The Ministers are expected to discuss key issues under negotiations namely agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services, development issues, rules among others. DG (WTO), Mr. Pascal Lamy, will also be participating in these meetings. Apart from India, most of the key trade ministers (US, EC, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Australia, China, Korea, HKC, Egypt, Malaysia) are expected to participate in these meetings, which will assess progress of the current Doha Round negotiations in the WTO.
Fluela Group is a small group of key WTO Members comprising Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, European Communities, India, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malaysia, Rwanda, South Africa, and United States.
G-20 Ministers would be meeting at Geneva on October 12. This would be the third Ministerial Meeting of the G-20 this year; first one was held in New Delhi in March 2005 and the last one in Pakistan in September 2005. The G-20 Ministers will also assess the progress made in agriculture negotiations so far and evolve the G-20 strategy for the negotiations on agriculture in the run-up to the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference of the WTO slated for December 2005.
The G-20 Ministers will also be consulting the country coordinators of other developing country alliances, in particular the G-33 on Special Products (SP) and the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM); the least developed countries; the Africa group; the CARICOM and the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific countries. The G-20 has gained recognition as a central player in the WTO negotiations in agriculture and its proposals on each of the three pillars in the agriculture negotiations (i.e., domestic support, market access and export competition) made during the June-July 2005 consultations on the structural aspects of the modalities have been heralded as comprehensive, constructive and genuine middle ground.
G-33 Ministers would also be meeting separately in Geneva on October 11. They would lend considerable focus to the SP and SSM issues in the agriculture negotiations.
The FIPS Ministerial Level Meeting is scheduled to be held on 11 October followed by the extended FIPS Ministerial Meeting on the October 12. This meeting is significant since in the run up to Hong Kong Ministerial, it is expected that more specificity will be provided to July framework in agriculture.
The recently constituted Small Group of WTO members on services, co-chaired by India and US, is also expected to meet at the Ministerial level to provide necessary direction to the negotiations in services.
In addition, Shri Kamal Nath, will also be holding bilateral talks with various key Trade Ministers as well DG (WTO), Mr. Pascal Lamy to provide necessary momentum to the negotiations so as to achieve meaningful results at the Ministerial in Hong Kong. Since this is a development round, Shri Kamal Nath will be working with other Trade Ministers to deliver on development dimensions of the Doha Round.
SB
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