The world's leading pharmaceutical companies are set to unveil proposals to ease the supply of essential medicines to poor countries, in an attempt to break a World Trade Organisation (WTO) deadlock that is jeopardising the Doha global trade round.
Proposals, agreed at a meeting of the companies' chief executives in Nice, France, are linked to efforts by Mr Robert Zoellick, US trade representative, to resolve the dispute before the WTO's ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
Mr Zoellick told a meeting of almost 30 trade ministers in Egypt that progress was being made and that he hoped more dialogue between the companies and developing countries would help to bridge their differences.
However, the industry's proposals have yet to be spelled out and may not be enough to satisfy poorer WTO members.
They view the issue as a litmus test of rich countries' pledges to make the Doha talks a "development round" and say it must be settled by Cancun if progress is to be made in other areas of the talks.
Under pressure from Pfizer, the largest US pharmaceuticals grup, and other US companies, the White House has blocked since December a draft WTO deal that would allow compulsory licensing of medicines imports by poor countries. The US industry fears the draft deal could undermine its patents and allow manufacturers in countries such as Brazil and India to flood the world market with generic versions of prescription drugs.
US companies have pressed for the WTO plan to be limited to specified diseases, including HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis. However that demand, which poor countries say is unacceptable, has been dropped from the latest industry proposals. A senior US trade official said Washington was no longer pursuing the demand and was focusing on meeting concerns that the WTO plan could be abused by manufacturers in developing nations and enable cheap medicines intended for poor countries to be diverted to wealthy ones.
The official suggested the concerns could be allayed if the countries assured the industry that their manufacturers would not seek to profit unfairly from the WTO plan.
