WASHINGTON (AFP) — World Bank chief Robert Zoellick on Monday suggested limits for a proposed agricultural safeguard that torpedoed WTO trade talks last month, saying the world's poor need a successful Doha Round.
"Given the high food prices around the world and the need for poor people to lower their cost of food, it just does not make sense for the Doha negotiations to founder upon this barrier," Zoellick said.
The World Trade Organization's Doha Round of talks collapsed in late July due to a row between India and the US over a special safeguard mechanism allowing nations to impose a special tariff on agricultural goods if imports surge or prices fall.
Zoellick said that major trade partners need to return to the negotiating table to find a compromise to the proposed special agricultural tariffs demanded by developing nations to protect their farmers.
"Working with WTO director general Pascal Lamy, the United States, India, and China should come up with a compromise," said Zoellick, the American president of the poverty-fighting development institution.
"Brazil, a developing country that is both a major agricultural exporter and home to many poor farmers, can help. Indonesia and Australia may be in a position to contribute to a solution too."
Lamy is scheduled to meet with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab later this week in Washington.
At the WTO talks in Geneva, the US refused to accept Indian proposals that developing nations should be allowed to boost duties by an additional 25 percent on farm products if imports surged by 15 percent.
Washington insisted extra duties should be allowed only if imports rose by 40 percent.
Zoellick offered several suggestions to breach the impasse.
Noting that it can take two or more years to challenge the grounds for imposing a safeguard, in which time the new barrier blocks trade, Zoellick said: "A compromise could create a speedy due process for challenges, without appeal."
The World Bank president said that all parties seemed to agree that safeguards should not be imposed to block normal trade flows, but they disagree on how much of a change warrants the temporary protection of a safeguard.
An acceptable way for a country to determine whether a safeguard is justified, "could require examination of factors in addition to increased trade flows."
"Under current WTO practice, the economy imposing a safeguard decides how much protection is appropriate. But this protection could be disciplined and limited," he said.
Zoellick, a former US trade representative, welcomed an initiative by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to restart the Doha Round.
"President Lula of Brazil has called on the parties not to let the WTO negotiations fail because of differences over a special safeguard for agriculture. He is right," said the president of the 185-nation institution.
"There is too much at stake to let this problem derail a global trade package that could expand economic growth and opportunity by cutting cut subsidies drastically, lowering tariffs significantly, and opening up services markets," he said.
India, too, has signaled it is willing to return to Geneva during a visit by Lamy last week aimed at kick-starting negotiations.
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