Vatican Says International Community Must Square Up to Failure of WTO Talks

(30 July 08 - RV) World trading powers appealed on Wednesday for efforts to salvage WTO proposals amid regret and emotion at the collapse of nine-day marathon talks, and warnings that the poorest countries will suffer.
Talks collapsed after nine gruelling days of negotiations due to disagreement between India and the United States over the so-called special safeguard mechanism (SSM).
The measure is designed to protect poor farmers, allowing countries to impose a special tariff on certain agricultural goods in the event of an import surge or price fall.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi is the Vatican’s permanent observer to the WTO, he says that poorer nations particularly, African countries will suffer most:
”The consequences of the failure of the Doha trade round negotiations, have to be squarely faced by the International Community. Now the poor countries will have some difficulties. First some of the Western African countries who have not reached an agreement on the question of cotton and their cotton exports they need in order to support the poor farmers who live on a subsistence agriculture. Another case is the exportation of bananas and other tropical fruits, all this now is still back on the negotiating table and it will take who knows a year? Two years? But in the meantime it is the poor people who can barely survive on the cultivation of these products who will suffer the consequences of this failure more directly”.