NCGA, Ag Groups Call for Renewed Focus on Core Issues (12-15-05)

NCGA, along with 13 other U.S. agriculture organizations, today called on World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators to return their focus to the core issues and ensure progress during the talks in Hong Kong this week.

The groups also stressed that the ministerial is too valuable an opportunity to squander by not discussing the priorities that would improve world trade.

The organizations are working toward the WTO achieving real progress in all three pillars of the agriculture negotiations, with special attention given to preparing for a meaningful market access agreement in 2006.

According to the statement, the agriculture groups are concerned with the talks becoming diverted away from the important issues needed to be discussed. “We are troubled that the focus of negotiations has been diverted from the pivotal issues of this round, including how this ministerial meeting can best advance prospects for significant market access,” it said.

The groups also called on the European Union (EU) to improve its market access offer in order for the negotiations to advance.

Meanwhile, the United States and the EU continue to move forward on an initiative to provide duty-free, quota-free access to all products from least developed countries. According to U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, the United States is still resisting demands that the initiative be implemented immediately. Portman indicated an agreement would have to be part of a larger Doha package and could not be implemented earlier as proposed by EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. “It would all be part of a final agreement that you’d take to the U.S. Congress,” Portman said.

Ministers are currently meeting in “green room” session aimed at improving the ministerial draft text after the EU came under intense pressure to agree to an end date on the elimination of farm export subsidies.

To view the statement in its entirety, please click on the following link.