Brazil is willing to wait until 2012 in order to secure a better deal on the negotiating table at the WTO, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Saturday.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, where WTO talks are set to enter a crucial new phase today, he said a failure next week would put back the conclusion of an agreement by another three or four years.
The Geneva meeting will bring together around 30 big WTO players in a bid to salvage the so-called Doha Round of trade liberalization talks, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001 and which has struggled ever since with developed and developing countries alike refusing to budge on their core interests.
“If we wait, we will obtain a better agreement” than the one currently on offer, the minister said, adding that public opinion was “changing in our favor.”
Amorim is the developing world’s main representative in the WTO talks and the public face of the G20, the grouping of developing countries co-led by Brazil and India.
He is seen as a hard negotiator committed to seeing wealthy countries cut agricultural subsidies that are barriers to farm imports from Brazil and other countries.
Amorim accused developed countries of demanding too much from other countries.
“One cannot snatch the maximum from the weakest and give only the minimum in exchange,” he said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the end of May that the EU, which is negotiating with the WTO, had “nothing” to gain from emerging countries on industrial products and services and had already made too many concessions over agricultural issues.
On this, Amorim said the agreement on the table with the WTO would oblige Brazil to reduce its customs duties on half its imports and that its highest duties would come down by a third from about 35 percent to 25 percent.
On services he said that Brazil would make an offer on Thursday in Geneva after three days of negotiation dedicated to agriculture and industrial products.
Amorim, who had talks on Saturday with WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, said he had asked him to allow enough time for states to negotiate possible changes to draft agreements on the table.
“Otherwise you may have a Cancun-like scenario,” he warned, referring to WTO talks that collapsed in Mexico in 2003.
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