India ready for Doha talks, firm on farm protection

CEBU, Philippines, Jan 14 (Reuters) India is ready to help revive the stalled Doha global trade talks but it will not agree to any measure that would endanger the livelihood of its farming sector, a senior government official said today.

India can be flexible on agriculture but developed countries must also review their policy on farm subsidies, India's commerce minister Kamal Nath told Reuters on the sidelines of a regional summit in the central Philippines.

''In agriculture we are flexible but we cannot negotiate livelihood security,'' he said. ''We can negotiate commerce.'' ''The developed countries must read the writing on the wall and recognise that the global economic architecture is changing, and that the structural flaws in global trade must be corrected in this round,'' Nath said.

He added that the United States and the European Union should first resolve their differences on farm subsidies and agricultural import tariffs for the Doha round to succeed.

The Doha development round hit an impasse in July over agriculture and any deal would need the backing of India and Brazil, both included in the G-20 group of developing nations and big agricultural producers.

Nath also said India was expected to conclude an agreement on a free trade area with the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) by July.

Under the proposed free trade pact, India would bring down tariffs on goods, excluding 490 products representing 5 percent of total trade with its southeast Asian neighbours, to between zero and 5 percent by 2018.

But India would continue to impose 100 percent tariffs on crude and refined palm oil, pepper, and tea until 2022, Nath later told reporters.

Southeast Asia's trade with India, with a population nearly double the combined size of ASEAN nations, has risen to 23 billion dollar in 2005 from 2.4 billion dollar in 1990.

India already has a free trade agreement with Thailand and Singapore and is currently studying a free trade pact with Malaysia and Indonesia.

A study on a possible free trade deal with China would be ready by October 2007, and India would decide by then whether it was ready to sign such a pact with the world's fourth largest economy.

''The continued rise of India and China is certainly something the rest of the world should take note of from a political and economic perspective,'' MK Narayanan, India's national security adviser, told reporters.

Reuters SSC DB2007