Amid heated talks in a serene Indonesian island resort on the second day of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) ninth ministerial conference (MC9), India swept all off their feet with its grandstanding on food security, even as a stalemate on the contentious ‘peace clause’, or an interim measure to do away with the limit on food subsidies, continued.“For India, food security is non-negotiable… The due restraint provision (or the peace clause), in its current form, cannot be accepted, as it has several shortcomings. It must remain in force till we reach a negotiated permanent solution and provide adequate protection from all kinds of challenges,” asserted a visibly piqued Commerce & Industry Minister Anand Sharma, referring to the negotiating text on agriculture as “half baked”.
Sharma, whose address at the plenary session of the WTO MC9 became a talking point here, said the stalemate on agricultural subsidies, since talks of having a global trade deal started 12 years ago, had led to “frustration and cynicism”. He rejected the proposed interim measure and trade facilitation agreement, risking an outright collapse of the ongoing talks.
In a voice that caught the attention even of the international media, Sharma said India would not accept what was on the table in the form of a so-called Bali package and demanded immediate changes to it. Elucidating the country’s firm stand on the matter, Sharma said India was ready to engage in talks if countries, especially the rich ones, agreed to a binding commitment on the interim measure and its continuation.
Later in the day, as member countries huddled up together inside a room to hammer out some consensus for more than three painstaking hours, while everybody waited with bated-breath outside, Sharma asserted India’s position more vehemently and refused to move “even an inch”, highly placed sources told Business Standard.
The minister is believed to have said there that his country can “show flexibility and compromise on anything but the core issue of food security”. According to a top official who was inside the meeting room, Sharma said: “An