EU: The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Joe Walsh, last night welcomed "the substantial progress" that has been made in negotiations on the framework agreement which will provide a road map for the completion of the Doha Trade Round if accepted today by the 147 members of the World Trade Organisation, writes Denis McClean in Geneva
Mr Walsh said that on the area of market access Ireland would have the right to designate its beef and dairy goods as "sensitive products" given their importance to the economy, and normal tariff reductions would not apply to competing imports.
He was also satisfied that the EU commitment to eliminate export subsidies would be matched by parallel measures on areas such as US export credit and food aid schemes and the operation of state enterprise systems in countries such as Australia and Canada.
The Minister said farmers' fears that domestic support in the form of direct payments worth €1.7 million would be affected in the immediate future were unfounded, and that any move towards elimination of export subsidies could take several years.
He said there was cautious optimism that a framework agreement could be concluded later today, but admitted that important issues still remained around market access for non-agricultural goods which were of particular concern to developing countries.
The president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr John Dillon, said the Government would have to be "constantly vigilant over the next 12 months to ensure parallelism on the issue of American export credits and free food aid."
He said that careful attention would have to be paid to the details as negotiations continued within the parameters laid down by the framework agreement.
Oxfam International, which has been monitoring developments closely over the last week, described the draft framework agreement produced early yesterday morning as "deeply disappointing."
Nonetheless, representatives from the main cotton-producing countries in Africa - Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal - told a press conference that the latest text represented very important progress. WTO officials are interpreting this as a hopeful sign that developing countries will sign up today to the framework agreement.