U.S. ambivalence an albatross for Doha: ex-officials

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World trade talks have made only halting progress in part because powerful agriculture and industrial interests in the United States remain unconvinced they'll win big from a new trade deal, former U.S. negotiators said on Wednesday.

"If there's not enough on the table, there is no way you're going to draw these forces in the U.S. and other places into trying to support a trade round," said Mickey Kantor, who served as Washington's top negotiator from 1993 to 1996.

Carla Hills, U.S. trade representative from 1989 to 1993, agreed that getting big business to be more enthusiastic about a resolution was a crucial, if difficult, element to clinching a deal in the Doha round of trade talks.

"We need to galvanize industry toward trade. There is a deal here to be made, but we don't have enough gravitas at the present time to go sell it," Hills said as she and other former negotiators discussed trade at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.

Prospects for the Doha round, the World Trade Organization talks which were halted in July in divisions over agriculture, have brightened in recent weeks since WTO chief Pascal Lamy hailed a relaunch to negotiations.

Former U.S. negotiators, however, were circumspect.

Pivotal in coming months will be how much rich nations agree to trade off protections for their farmers -- which the United States protects with subsidies and Europe protects with tariffs -- for greater market access for their farm exports.

Hills said the round's prospects were further complicated by ambivalence among developing countries who fear they got a bad deal in past trade talks, making them reluctant to make concessions that might leave their poorest vulnerable.

CARDS ON THE TABLE

Clayton Yeutter, another former negotiator and secretary of agriculture, said the Doha talks have been bogged down in a "bizarre exercise" of negotiating tariff cuts without discussion of specific products. That makes it hard to assess the true impact of a Doha deal.

"So far there's been not much of a commitment on anybody's part to real-world liberalization in agriculture, and that's got to change," he said.

Negotiators also stressed the importance of cultivating congressional support for trade talks, both from Republicans and Democrats.

Building bipartisan support for a new multilateral deal could be difficult following November's midterm elections, in which Democrats critical of the Iraq war and administration trade policy captured control of Congress.

Many believe Susan Schwab, Bush's current trade representative, faces an uphill battle in convincing Congress to renew the president's trade promotion authority, which expires at the end of June.

One selling point for trade skeptics, Hills said, might be Doha's core mission of integrating poor nations into the world economy and helping them beat poverty through trade.

"It's not just that we can sell more; it's also that we can alleviate poverty and eliminate a five-fold difference in agricultural subsidies and halt failing states," she said.

Some of the former officials suggested that renewing trade negotiating powers, known as fast-track, might be easier if the authority was limited to the Doha talks.