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EU, Us, Africa, encouraged about WTO after informal trade talks in Kenya

AFP, Mombasa, Kenya
Top trade officials from the United states, the European Union and Africa said Wednesday they had emerged from informal talks in Kenya encouraged about the future of the current stalled round of WTO negotiations.
"Little by little we make progress," Us Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told a news conference after the meeting, which brought together trade ministers and officials from more than a dozen African countries to the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
"It's very important that 2004 not be a lost year for the WTO," said Zoellick, who is in the last days of a whirlwind world tour designed to rescue the current round of trade liberalisation negotiations following their collapse in Cancun, Mexico in september.
The tour left him with the impression there was "a good strong interest in moving ahead the Doha agenda," he said.
"We have hard work ahead, but I leave this session with a feeling of encouragement and (that) there's a
commitment in Africa as well as a recognition of the need for flexibility to move this forward," he said.
Africa accounts for around two percent of global trade.
The Cancun meeting fell apart amid disagreements on tradedistorting agricultural subsidies in the EU and the Us and because poor countries refused to be pressured to widen Doha's development agenda to include four so-called singapore Issues: transparency in government procurement, competition policy, the red tape in trade and cross border investment regulations.
Zoellick said the United states was willing to limit the number of singapore issues in the Doha agenda to one: trade facilitation, which involves reducing the bureaucracy involved in importing and exporting.
European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy was also upbeat, describing as "very important" the fact that developing countries, most of which are collectively known as G90, were building a common negotiating position through meetings such as this.
"I take today's meeting a signal
on the G90's part to embark on a closer negotiating relationship" with us, he said.
"As far as Europe is concerned I think the meeting was very substantive," he told the same news conference.
"It went beyond general declarations, beyond already known positions to address a number of issues, on agriculture, on industrial tariffs (and) on singapore Issues."
He recalled that he was willing to abolish export support for products that are of concern going to developing countries and said he had called on the G90 to come up with a list of such products.
"I dont have any preconditions on this list. What will remain to be negotiated is the phasing out to zero," he added.
In Cape Town earlier this week Zoellick said the United states would slash its own agricultural export subsidies as long as the EU and Japan took similar action.
Kenyan Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi, who organised the event, was also optimistic about the viability of the Doha round.