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Europe eyes way out of trade deadlock on hot-button issues

AFP, Brussels
The European Commission is offering to separate out negotiations on four hotly-contested topics to break a deadlock in global trade talks -- but only if others also show similar flexibility.
According to a document seen by AFP, the EU executive is proposing to allow talks on the so-called singapore issues outside the framework of the World Trade Organiz-ation (WTO)'s Doha round of negotiations.
The initiative comes after the collapse of WTO talks in Cancun in september, blamed at least in part on failure to agree on the issues: cross-
border investment, competition, trade facilitation and government procurement.
"Following Cancun, it would clear the air and allow the WTO to move forward on these issues rapidly, if the EU confirmed that it no longer insisted" on the inclusion of the singapore issues in a final WTO deal, said the document.
The 15-nation EU along with Japan has been the driving force for starting WTO talks on new global rules on the four subjects but has faced stiff opposition from developing countries.
Brussels offered to "unbundle" them shortly before the end of the Cancun meeting, in a bid to keep the WTO talks
on track for a January 1, 2005 deadline to end the so-called Doha Development round of world trade talks.
But the talks, held mid-way through the round launched in the Qatari capital on November 2001, collapsed after bickering over cross-border investment and competition added to a more fundamental dispute about farm subsidies in richer states and the high tariffs on agriculture imports from developing nations.
Before Cancun and during the doomed meeting itself, many developing countries assumed that the EU would make concessions on the key sticking point of farm subsidies if it
wanted progress on the singapore issues.
Now Brussels, while reminding its partners that they agreed to negotiate the singapore issues when the Doha round was launched, is proposing two options to break the deadlock, according to the commission paper.
One would be "optional participation" -- involving all WTO members at first, but with participants later being able to indicate if they "subscribe to the results or whether they would prefer to stay on the outside of what would then be an agreement only among the consenting parties."