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CANCUN, Mexico, Sept. 14 (UPI) — The anti-globalization protesters have their wish. The World Trade Organization conference in the Mexican resort of Cancún fell apart chaotically Sunday afternoon. It is not what the United States and Europe wanted. But it was in part because they, like the anti-globalization protesters, are out of step with their times.

Myriad views were represented in Cancún. The protesters, lying in the road, shouted "Zapata lives, the struggle continues." Small farmers from the United States, France, Japan and Korea protested that "free trade produces absurdity," not noticing that the last thing the world has is free trade in agriculture.

But, despite the clashing voices and views, the truth is that free trade ideas are winning the international argument. More countries are coming round to them, in theory, if not in practice. Many non-governmental organizations such as Oxfam now plead for market opening, rather than protection. Cancún failed because those supposed committed advocates of free trade, the United States and Europe — and they do like other countries to open markets — did not open their own markets enough to make it succeed.

That was not, of course, how the United States and Europe saw it. Following the failure of the Congress on Sunday afternoon U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick blamed countries that were more interested in "tactical rhetoric" than negotiations. Pascal Lamy, EU Trade Commissioner said that the WTO was "a medieval organization" and was "not a rules-based body."

Yes, the WTO is cumbersome and may need reform. But the conference failed long before the make or break negotiations of Saturday night and Sunday. The seeds of failure were sown in the past year and a half with the passage of the U.S. farm bill and the failure by the European Union meaningfully to tackle the farm subsidies enshrined in the Common Agricultural Policy.

The trade round launched in Doha, Qatar in 2001 was supposed to address above all weaknesses in agricultural trade. It would thereby foster development and poverty alleviation. There was, then, symbolism Sunday, the final day of the conference, in the breakdown of the talks on the so-called Singapore issues that were intended further to open developing country markets. On the final day of the five day summit agriculture had not yet been discussed.

Priorities told. The Singapore issues of investment, competition, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation were simply not of interest to developing countries. Why were they being discussed at all? Agriculture was the supposed priority of the round and the undoubted priority of the developing countries. For the United States, too, the Singapore issues were not the priority.

Asked why the Singapore issues had been discussed before agriculture on Sunday, Lamy said that it was a decision of the chair of the conference, Mexican foreign minister Luis Ernesto Derbez. He said, too, that having consulted with the EU Council of Ministers, he had been in a position to drop the issues of investment and competition in the interests of reaching an agreement.

By this time, however, developing countries had become utterly alienated by the lack of attention to their demands on agriculture. There was anger, too, over the strength of the efforts to persuade them to sign a final agreement. African parliamentarians denounced the fact that "in the early hours of this morning" our ministers came "under intense pressure when they were dragged into an impromptu meeting." This time, strong arm tactics were not going to work.

The question now is what all this means. Lamy said that the Doha round of trade negotiations was "not dead, but in intensive care." His comments on the "medieval" WTO suggested he had lost faith in the institution as a decision-making body.

Zoellick referred to "1970s ideology" and warned it had led to the "lost decade" of the 1980s. Both Lamy and Zoellick, in their separate press conferences, had stressed that concessions had been made on agriculture and that an agreement on agriculture looked possible. Both, too, said, in Lamy's words, that proposals were "still on the table."

But what both Lamy and Zoellick are choosing to ignore is that it is Europe and the United States who are lagging behind ideologically. For they promote free trade on their grossly biased terms.

European and American farmers receive huge subsidies and are thereby protected against imports from developing countries. The EU, in particular, dumps products on international markets, doing enormous damage to poor countries. Textiles, supposedly opened up nine years ago in the Uruguay round, still receive extensive quota protection. The very products developing countries produce are those to which Europe, the United States and Japan remain largely closed. The world's poor are the victims and in Cancún the poor countries' representatives got angry.

Lamy and Zoellick did what they could. The WTO's bitter failure in Cancún goes back to political failures in Washington, Brussels, Paris and Berlin. Lamy referred, amusingly, to the relatively small numbers of victims of trade negotiations who have considerable trouble causing capacity. No doubt he had in mind farmers and piles of manure. It's time that in the interests of the world's poor and all of us the rich world's leaders acquired the courage to take the complainers on.

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WTO falls on EU, US failure By Ian Campbell UPI Chief Economics Correspondent Published 9/14/2003 10:15 PM

WTO falls on EU, US failure
By Ian Campbell
UPI Chief Economics Correspondent
Published 9/14/2003 10:15 PM