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Keny
a yesterday urged other African countries to adopt a spirit of
compromise in negotiations aimed at ending the impasse on the Doha
round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks.
"Without sacrificing the principles and fundamental issues that we
stand for, we cannot be successful negotiators unless we have some
negotiating room," Kenya's Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi told
reporters in Nairobi.
He was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of government
officials and private sector representatives from 12 African
countries to discuss how to revive deadlocked world trade
liberalisation talks.
"We should show a certain level of flexibility so that we can be
ready to make concessions in order to harvest from what is the most
important issue.
"That requires that we start putting content in the right
positions, then ranking our priorities and finally having the
political will to surrender some of our positions in order to
harvest," said Mukhisa.
Negotiations aimed at resurrecting the Doha round of talks started
in Geneva last week with WTO's 146 member states trying to reach an
agreement on the nettlesome issue of agriculture before the end of
July.
The Geneva discussions will also address market access for
non-agricultural products and cotton, as well as the so-called
Singapore issues - whether the WTO should have control over
investment, competition, government procurement and trade
facilitation.
"At all the trade meetings, it is our intention to deepen that
sense of ranking priorities and being flexible to allow for
progress on negotiations because we are the principal stakeholders
in the success of the Doha rounds," Kituyi said.
"We must do what it takes to make it successful," he added.
Kituyi said "rigidity" by African representatives was partly to
blame for the collapse of WTO negotiations in the Mexican resort
town of Cancun last year.
Developing countries, backed by major farm exporters such as
Australia and Canada, demanded in Cancun that the biggest trading
powers, the US and the European Union, dismantle subsidies for farm
exports. – Sapa-AFP.
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