Campaigners slam EU's Mandelson for stance on WTO

BRUSSELS, June 2 (Reuters) More than 70 non-governmental organisations and faith and labour groups denounced Europe's demands in global trade talks as damaging to poor countries and serving the interests of big business instead.

As the talks for World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha round head into a critical phase, the groups accused European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson of undermining the European Union's public commitment to a pro-development agenda.

''The EU has pressed aggressively for developing countries to open up their industrial and services markets while refusing to make the necessary changes to stop the damage caused by its own agricultural subsidies regime,'' they said in an advertisement in the Financial Times yesterday.

''This agenda threatens to cause immense harm through increased poverty, job losses and environmental destruction across the world,'' it said.

The organisations that signed the advertisement included Action Aid, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Catholic Church charity group CAFOD.

''At this crucial stage in the WTO negotiations, we wish to make it known that you do not represent us in pursuing (the EU's agenda) any further. You do not act in our name,'' they said.

A spokesman for Mandelson said the criticisms were ''seriously misleading'' as the EU had no demands on the world's poorest countries while bigger developing nations like Brazil and India could afford concessions in reducing barriers to trade in industrial goods and services.

''NGOs consistently fail to differentiate between developing countries,'' spokesman Peter Power said. ''Benin is not Brazil and Chad is not China.'' He said ''not a single African government'' had voiced the views expressed by the organisations in their advertisement.

Trade ministers from many WTO countries are due to meet in Geneva in late June to try to strike a deal on farm and industrial goods, two pillars of the round, in the hope of being able to seal a full deal in July.

The round -- formally called the Doha Development Agenda -- was launched in 2001 as a way to help reduce poverty in developing countries and boost the global economy after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

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