Doha Trade Deal's One True Believer

The Age

Saturday August 30, 2008

Tim Colebatch

G20 founder Celso Amorim is touring the world to revive talks

CELSO AMORIM has been called the one true believer in a Doha round trade deal. And having felt close to victory, Brazil's widely-respected Foreign Minister is not giving up now.

As founder-convenor of the G20 group of big developing countries, Mr Amorim is a central player in the long-running negotiations. And now he is touring the world to persuade others to go back to the negotiating table they abandoned in Geneva last month.

In Canberra for talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his ministers, Mr Amorim says he is convinced that a deal is still possible this year to unlock benefits worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year to global output - much of it, to Brazilian and Australian farmers.

Despite its shortcomings, he argues a Doha agreement would reduce European and US farm subsidies, scrap export subsidies, open markets for farm produce and industrial goods, and give more certainty to the rules of trade.

"For us, there is no substitute for the multilateral system", he says.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday threw his support behind a resumption of talks, while in Canberra, Mr Amorim and Trade Minister Simon Crean issued a joint statement pledging "to conclude the negotiating phase of the round this year".

Mr Amorim says time has almost run out, but not quite. "I think it's possible, but it requires hard political decisions, and it has to be very fast", he says. But he says key players are willing to engage, and they have two to four weeks to make a breakthrough.

His first goal is solve the issue that brought the Geneva meeting unstuck: a dispute over rules allowing developing countries to block import surges that threaten the livelihoods of their farmers.

He dismisses fears that the next US President and Congress could reject a deal signed by the Bush administration. "If there is a good agreement that everyone else will commit to, then the next President will also agree", he says.

Some would see that as optimistic, given the anti-trade views now ruling Washington. But a dogged, patient optimism characterises the stellar career of the 66-year-old from Sao Paulo.

In between two stints as Brazil's Foreign Minister, he has been president of the United Nations Security Council, and chaired the UN Conference on Disarmament, the International Labour Organisation and innumerable global meetings and agencies. If there is one thing he could change in the way the world is run, he says, it would be to reform the Security Council: broadening its membership and reducing the veto powers of the big five. "I am a realist", he says, "but we have to make it less imperfect".

© 2008 The Age

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