Sunday, March 30, 2003 (GENEVA): The man leading negotiations on reducingbarriers to international trade in agriculture acknowledged Friday that itwill be impossible to meet next week’s deadline to set the framework forcuts because of intractable national positions.Stuart Harbinson told the 145-nation World Trade Organisation thatcountries need to come up with new proposals and compromises.The blueprint is supposed to be agreed on March 31, but negotiators nowfear the talking could continue for months.An agreement on agriculture is seen by many as the key to a wider round oftrade liberalisation negotiations that are supposed to be completed by theend of next year. Already the WTO has missed a number of deadlines, butthis failure would be the biggest so far.US chief negotiator Allen Johnson this week claimed the problems werecaused by “the European Union's inability to engage and Japan'sunwillingness to engage.'' Those countries insist the talks must takeaccount of the fact that some subsidies are needed to ensureself-sufficiency, consumer protection and animal welfare standards.But EU negotiator Mary Minch denied that the 15-nation bloc is laggingbehind and said some countries were demanding a lot from the EU withoutoffering anything in return.“We feel that we have put forward an ambitious and balanced proposal whichwill move reform ahead in all the areas,’’ she said.Countries have been making proposals for months on how to reduce importtariffs on agricultural goods and cut back on subsidies paid to farmers,but they disagree widely on which areas to tackle and how far to go.While some nations – mostly large, agricultural exporting countries likeAustralia, the United States and Brazil – want to see major cuts,importers like the European Union and Japan have lesser ambitions.Some developing countries, including India, say they need to see big cutsto subsidies paid by rich nations before they would consider reducingimport duties.Harbinson, who chairs the WTO committee negotiating on agriculture,produced a proposal for the agreement in February which called for importtariffs to be cut by up to 60%.It also proposed the elimination of all subsidies linked to exports withinnine years and drastic cuts to other subsidies. But the Harbinson plan wasroundly criticised from all sides.If agriculture discussions overrun, that could slow the progress in theWTO’s other areas of negotiation, such as trade in manufactured goods andtrade in services like banking and telecommunications. – AP