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Cancun appears headed for a fiasco like Seattle with Tokyo World Trade Organisation mini-ministerial hitting "roadblocks" as developing countries rallied around India, which resorted to tough posturing on contentious agriculture, Singapore, Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights and public health issues.
"The road to Cancun is riddled with roadblocks and potholes. It is for the developed countries to win trust back so that the people in the developing countries can see some tangible benefit of a multilateral forum," Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters in New Delhi.
Jaitley, who returned on Monday after leading the Indian delegation at the three-day ministerial at Tokyo, said the development agenda laid out at Doha should not be diluted and that issues pertaining to TRIPS and public health, special and differential treatment, implementation issues should be addressed upfront.
On agriculture, he said it was important for developed countries to bring down their subsidies while allowing the developing countries to calibrate their own tariffs.
"Our tariffs have a direct impact on the lives of farmers. We can't permit social unrest," he said underlining the need for improving the Harbinson's draft proposal on agriculture to address the concerns of the developing nations.
Meanwhile, official sources said that with the battle lines drawn between the United States and the European Union on agriculture, the drive to Cancun where the next ministerial is scheduled to be held in September this year seems to be moving towards a cliff hanger from where one could only fall as in Seattle.
Stressing that there is no place for charity in the WTO negotiations, sources said that India would have to watch out for its own interests to maximise the benefits while articulating the concerns of the developing countries with several African countries looking up to India for leadership particularly on the issue of TRIPS and public health.
Summing up the outcome of the Tokyo ministerial, sources said India made it clear that the status quo has to be maintained on Singapore issues as more study was still required as developing countries have not yet reached that stage of development.
Trade and investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation comprised the core Singapore issues on which the Doha declaration has very clearly stated that negotiations could start only if modalities could be worked through explicit consensus at Cancun.
Going by the outcome at Tokyo, where Singapore issues took a backseat, there appears to be no progress on this with even the US agreeing to India's viewpoint on some Singapore issues at the ministerial, implying that member countries were still far away from a consensus on the issue.