May 25, 1998

MANDELA TELLS WTO TO BRIDGE NORTH-SOUTH GAP

Geneva, May 19 (IPS) -- South African president Nelson Mandela Tuesday called on the World Trade Organisation's 132 members to forge a "partnership for development through trade and investment."  

"Trade does not of itself and by itself bring a better world," Mandela told the WTO meeting held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Multilateral Trading System. "The extent of benefits that trade brings will depend on how we shape the process," he warned. "This requires wise work to be done."

Earlier Cuban president Fidel Castro said the WTO agenda had been hijacked by rich nations, while poorer countries were being denied access to markets in the north. "New subjects introduced in the WTO by rich countries have resulted in a reduction in the competitive advantage of developing countries," the Cuban leader said, adding that new ideas being promoted by Western nations would be inevitably used as "pretexts for non-tariff barriers". 

"Third World countries have been losing everything," Castro told the WTO. "How are we supposed to make a living? What goods and services shall we export ? Which industrial production will be left to us?" 

Castro warned that multinational firms from the north were turning developing nations into an "immense free zone of assembly plants that do not even pay taxes."  

The Cuban leader called on the developing countries to act jointly in the multilateral trade negotiations converting the WTO into "an instrument of the struggle for a more just and better world."  

"No nation, big or small, can be left out of this important institution, and its admission cannot be subjected to humiliating conditions," said Castro.  

The Cuban leader's bleak assessment of the last fifty years of the multilateral trading system contrasts with the upbeat evaluation of global trade given by both the United States and the European Union.  

In his speech Monday, US President Bill Clinton insisted that world trade had created prosperity worldwide. "This dynamic, idea-based new global economy offers the possibility of lifting billions of people into a worldwide middle class," he said. "Globalisation is not a policy choice -- it is a fact. We can work to shape these powerful forces of change for the benefit of our people," Clinton added. "Nor we can retreat behind the walls of protection and get left behind in the global economy."  

British prime minister Tony Blair, the current holder of the presidency of the European Union, told the WTO that the "irreversible and irresistible trend" towards free trade was unstoppable. "It is hard to conceive of a return to the full-blown protectionism and strangulation of trade which disfigured the 1930s," he added. But, the danger of "subtle forms of protectionism" remained and "pressures rise in a crisis," Blair warned.  

Developing nations, Mandela said, must "precisely define those areas that are obstacles to their progress in the world trading system," he urged. "There can be no refusal to discuss matters such as labour standards, social issues and the environment". 

But Mandela warned Western countries that they must also be ready to listen to developing countries' demands for improvements in the WTO's treatment of sectors such as textiles and agriculture. "If developing countries feel that they have nothing to gain except further burdens, then it will prove difficult to deal with these crucial matters," he insisted. 

Castro proposed a strategy for the developing nations act together in the multilateral trade negotiations making use of the support of "responsible statesmen" in the countries of the North. Castro criticised the absence of China and Russia from its ranks, mentioning the obstacles put in the way of their membership.  

"The developing countries must fend off divisions. Those of us who were colonies yesterday and are still today enduring the consequences of backwardness, poverty and underdevelopment, we are the majority in this organisation," he said.

Castro said the new issues introduced in the WTO agenda by the wealthy countries threaten a reduction of the developing countries' competitive possibilities in the midst of already difficult conditions fraught with inequalities.  

In his speech, Castro criticised "the economic war" declared on his nation by the United States, especially the Helms-Burton law, which punishes entrepreneurs from third countries working with nationalised assets in Cuba. He said the "disgraceful" Helms-Burton law "has not been amended at all" criticising the agreement established this weekend by authorities from the United States and European Union on the extraterritorial reach of these regulations.

Brazilian President Fernando Enrique Cordozo expressed his concern over attempts to raise barriers to access to Brazilian products under the pretext of assuring better environment protection and the attempts to establish a relationship between trade and labour standards which he said was "unjust and senseless". He also was critical of the attempts at application of trade legislation whose compatibility with WTO agreements was doubtful, and the use of countervailing duties or anti-dumping measures perversely used to protect obsolete industries. Cordozo also made a strong defence of MERCOSUR.