Mandelson ask India to return to negotiating table

London, Nov 18: EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson will make a wide appeal to India for a return to the negotiating table in the Doha Round during his talk in New Delhi today, while insisting that the country has a ''uniquely important contribution to make at this point to restart the Round''.

In the face of the US and Brazilian elections and with the expiry of US Trade Promotion Authority due in the middle of next year, Mr Mandelson will identify a ''narrow window'' to conclude the negotiations in the next few months and spell out three steps to achieve it. He will recommit the EU to a substantial offer, and identify key necessary contributions from both the United States and India.

Mr Mandelson will insist that the economic and political costs of failure must drive the negotiators back to the table in the weeks ahead. He will insist that ''the cost of failure is massively out of proportion to the individual issues on which the negotiations foundered in July''.

He is expected to set out three key steps to an agreement - the first being to accept that negotiations must resume where they broke off. Mr Mandelson's argument is that ''there is no realistic alternative to resuming where we left off in July on agriculture tariffs and subsidies. Every move away from the emerging consensus centred around the G20 will make eventual agreement harder to reach at''.

Mr Mandelson will say the G20 proposal represented ''a balance between the need to advance decisively on farm trade liberalisation and the need to respect the reasonable agricultural sensitivities of the less competitive''.

His argument will be ''aiming below the target zone of what the G20 is proposing is not ambitious enough. Bidding for more would commit us to failure'' and that ''the demand from some WTO members that farm trade should catch up in one trade round with what six decades of liberalisation has achieved in manufactures is political fantasy''.

The second step will be to make the economic case for the deal on the table. Mr Mandelson is expected to reject the suggestion that the agreement on the table in July was a weak one. He will insist that ''by a long way, we have in the making the single most ambitious multilateral trade agreement ever negotiated. And one that pushes hard at the limits of the politically possible, in Europe and elsewhere''.

He will note that where the Uruguay Round agreed an average farm tariff cut of 36 per cent, the EU is already talking about the possibility of cutting farm tariffs by 50 per cent. And where Uruguay allowed countries to protect farm products behind average cuts, Doha has already agreed to a system that will cut high tariffs most and in which every single product will be cut, with no exceptions. He will note that where the Uruguay Round agreed a 20 per cent cut on trade distorting farm subsidies, in July the EU was ready to sign off on cuts of more than 70 per cent and commitment to the complete elimination of all export subsidies by 2013.

This deal, he will argue, can unlock the way to achievable agreements on new trade in manufactures, services and trade facilitation - all vital for developed and developing countries alike. If the Round fails, Mr Mandelson will say, ''all of this is lost''.

The final step to an agreement will be to prepare the ground, both technically and politically. Welcoming the signal from Geneva that technical-level negotiations will restart, he will say ''the WTO's engine in Geneva has been left to go cold for too long''.

His argument will be that all major parties now need to show flexibility. Europe, ''will renew its willingness to improve its farm tariff offer by adding substantially to the 39 per cent it offered a year ago.'' '' We have said we are ready to add more than ten percentage points and get within close reach of the average farm tariff cut demanded by developing countries in a way that demonstrably gives new market access to the United States and other agricultural exporters.'' He will welcome Susan Schwab's clear signal last week that the US remains committed to working for a trade dealand urge the US to show similar flexibility - especially in recognising that its gains will come not suggest from agriculture but from the Doha round as a whole.

He will argue that India has a ''uniquely important contribution to make at this point to restarting the Round. This is to show some further flexibility on agriculture. Not to the extent of opening India's huge agricultural subsistence economy to global competition.

But by moving where you can to allow others limited but real market access, including in some difficult commodity areas''.

UNI