Zoellick, Lamy preparing for another confrontation

Two of the world's most influential trade negotiators, Robert Zoellick of the US and Pascal Lamy of the EU, are set to face off once again at a WTO conference this week, with the future of global trade liberalization hanging in the balance.

Zoellick, the official US trade representative, and Lamy, the EU commmissioner for trade, will head their respective delegations at the crucial five-day WTO ministerial gathering in Cancun, Mexico starting tomorrow.

The two men played key roles in drafting the Doha Development Agenda, a far-reaching roadmap for the gradual elimination of trade barriers, adopted by the WTO in the Qatari capital Doha in November 2001.

Implementing the roadmap has since proven to be a far more complicated task than had been expected and there are now fears that the Jan. 1, 2005 deadline for concluding the negotiating process will be missed.

The Cancun meeting is seen as a "stock-taking" session along the way as well as an opportunity to breathe new life into the talks.

With the US and the EU still at odds on the most contentious issue, the pace at which government assistance to agriculture is to be phased out, the outcome in Cancun could well depend on whether Zoellick and Lamy are once again able to set aside ideological differences as they did in Doha.

The two are hardly strangers, having had numerous -- and by all accounts amicable -- encounters since February 2001, when Zoellick was confirmed as Washington's top trade official.

Their friendship extends back to 1991 to 1992 when Zoellick was then-US president George Bush's personal representative at meetings of the G7 industrialized nations and Lamy negotiated on behalf of then European Commission head Jacques Delors.

While Lamy, 56, is described as a committed socialist, Zoellick, 50, is an ardent free marketeer. But that has never seemed to complicate their personal relationship and they continue to operate on a first-name basis.

Nonetheless, Lamy has cautioned: "As in business, friendship helps, but we each have obligations to our constituents."

Some of Lamy's most vocal constituents are European farmers, whose interests he has vowed to protect in the face of demands from the US and certain developing countries for faster action against trade-distorting agricultural export subsidies.

"We in Europe and many others, including a number of developing countries, have made a political choice to support our agriculture because it is not just another economic activity," he said in a commentary last Friday in Singapore's Straits Times daily.

"It plays a part in conserving the environment, food safety and animal welfare," he said.

Zoellick by contrast has chafed under what he calls Europe's insularity on trade issues, notably its opposition to farm products containing genetically modified organisms. He has branded such a stance "the European disease."

"The United States has a global perspective, whether in security, economic or political terms," he said in a speech in Munich last May.

"On some of these issues with Europe, whether it be agriculture, the benefits of the WTO ... it's very important that Europeans ... raise their head above the barricades now and then and see the rest of the world," he said.

The EU and the US last month reached a framework agreement under which they pledged to work for a reduction in agricultural subsidies, a step hailed by Lamy as raising the chances for a positive result in Cancun.

Zoellick, however, made no reference to the accord in a pre-Cancun statement issued last Friday.