Trade: Ruggiero to stay on till April?

Geneva, 18 Nov (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Indications that the process of selection and naming of a new Director-General for the World Trade Organization, to succeed present incumbent Renato
Ruggiero, may not be completed in time and the successor elected in December became clear Wednesday as WTO officials briefed the media on plans for high level meetings, in March, on Trade and Environment and Trade and Development.

The two meetings, to be organized by the secretariat on its responsibility, and with both to be "symposium" with participation of high level officials from WTO members, and participation of
NGOs, business community, and international organizations are to be held in March and will be chaired by Mr. Ruggiero, WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told media Wednesday.

Mr. Renato Ruggiero will be at his job of Director-General of the World Trade Organization and chair these meetings, both because of his own personal involvement in opening a dialogue with civil
society and at the request of many delegations who have conveyed to him their view that he should organize and chair the meeting, he added.

Mr. Ruggiero when he was elected to this post in 1995, was named for a single four-year term, and on the understanding that his successor would be from outside Europe.

In June this year, Ruggiero advised the members through a letter to the Chairman of the General Council, Canada's John Weekes, that he would definitely leave his post at the end of his term on 30 April, and would be willing to step down earlier if a successor is chosen and he would be able to take office at the beginning of the process for future negotiations.

And in setting in motion the process of selection, and for countries to put in candidates by end of September, Weekes had suggested that the process should not become as when Ruggiero was
chosen (a protracted, and somewhat unseemly process) and that they should choose by consensus a candidate by the end of November or so, and formally elect him at a General Council meeting in
December.

With four candidates in the race, and all of them having appeared before and presented their views before informal heads of delegations meetings last week, a two-member team of Ambassadors
Celso Lafer of Brazil and Amb. William Rossier are to start from next week consultations with delegations on their choices and preferences.

But trade officials have been vague on the process and when it is expected to be completed.

Last time, the US initially backed and took a high profile behind Mexico's Salinas, and the EC Commission backed Ruggiero, and the Asians backed the South Korean. While Salinas ultimately had to withdraw, the Americans gave way and supported Ruggiero, but only after his going to Washington and meeting the USTR and making statements to satisfy the United States.

Neither side has been wanting to repeat that history nor have either of them publicly sponsored any particular candidate. But it has been known that the US supports the New Zealand's Mike Moore,
while EC Vice-President Sir Leon Brittan wanted to sponsor and support the Canadian Maclaren, but did not get very far inside the Commission or EU members. Some EU members have indicated their support for Thailand's Supachai and others for Morocco's Hassan Abouyoub. Japan and Australia appear to back Supachai.

There are also some indications that the two majors may not be able to overcome their differences in time to select a candidate out of the four or even to spring an outside candidate on the ground of
deadlock over the four.

Even more, they appear to be having some second thoughts on a new person taking over and being in charge during the preparations for the 3rd Ministerial and the various negotiations they want to launch then, and that they be manoeuvring to continue Mr. Ruggiero until the 3rd Ministerial.

On the subjects for the high level meetings, Rockwell explained that the ideas and proposals in a secretariat paper have evolved from extensive contacts, and in substantive meeting with some NGOs at Washington a couple of weeks ago.

NGOs in the North, he said, were preoccupied with "environment" issues and the effect of trade rules on environment protection, while NGOs in the South are concerned about effect of trade rules
on development.

This first high-level symposia, with the meeting held back to back, will enable civil society to interact with high officials and exchange and present their views, he added.

The way the WTO was presenting the issues and differentiating between environment and development suggested that the secretariat, though often citing UNCED and the processes (including the World Commission on Environment and Development) appear still to be viewing the two as separate problems and issues, and the trade-development nexus as a neo-classical, neo-liberal paradigm of automatic process through market forces and with no reference to equity or distribution issues.

At UNCTAD-IX in Midrand (April 1996), at a televised round-table discussion, with participation of other heads of agencies and ministers of G77 countries, and in response to questions about
trade liberalization and the resulting marginalization of developing countries, Ruggiero had drawn a distinction between raising resources efficiently and the equity issues of distribution. The responsibility of the trading system, he had said, was to favour the most competitive producer and thus raise resources in the most efficient way, but how the resources are to be used was the responsibility of other institutions. This response visibly shocked delegations and ministers, and some of the heads of states who in an earlier session had underscored the importance of equity and preventing marginalization as a result of globalization. While Mr. Ruggiero appears to have come some distance from his Midrand view, the agenda for the trade and development symposium
appears to be still rooted in a linear view of economic growth and development.

The agenda does not appear to address the development issues on the supply side and distributional effects: how developing countries could trade and gain from trade and trade liberalization if they had nothing to supply and thus the need to focus on the supply side of development economics: industrialization, infant industry in developing countries, capital accumulation and technology transfer; and the distributional consequences of trade liberalization and its negative impacts for growth which is the crux of the problem of winners and losers and marginalization.

And though in the four years of the WTO, civil society has been raising these questions as well as equity issues of liberalization and globalization and developing countries have been repeatedly
referred to the implementation problems of the WTO rules, and obstacles for development, the agenda does not reflect any of these, nor of how to overcome impediments to trade and development of developing countries in the WTO rules nor how the effective participation of developing countries in the trading system could be facilitated.

Some of the outmoded ideas about greater integration of developing countries into the system - a code word for more obligations - continues to figure.
However, at the informal consultations, Egypt supported by several other delegations including from some Latin America would appear to have said that the symposium on Trade and Development should be co-chaired by the head of the WTO and UNCTAD, an organization which they said had more expertise and knowledge on 'development'.

The secretariat had put forward some agenda and themes, and these are now to be reformulated and brought before another meeting where some final decisions on the themes and the chair and co-chair are to be decided.