Ghana's chief delegate to the meeting, Trade and Industry Minister Kofi K. Apraku, told Conference News Daily Sunday evening that he doesn't think a new round will be approved-at least, not one that will be called a "round." Apraku said it was possible the talks would continue but would be called a "development agenda."

Apraku told Conference News Daily that the negotiations in general are moving ahead smoothly in many areas. He said the delegates were very close to agreement on agriculture: "The gap is not that wide." On the other hand, Minister George Yeo of Singapore, the "friend of the chair" conducting the consultations on agriculture, was quoted by WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell as likening the tentative agreement to "a house of cards- -the movement of one card could send the whole thing toppling down."

Apraku said that progress was also being made on TRIPs and medicines, services and the WTO's rules. He said the negotiators had also moved closer together on implementation issues, but were still having problems resolving differences over textiles and subsidies. On the other hand, Apraku said he saw no agreement coming out of this meeting on the so-called "Singapore" or "new" issues of investment, environment and trade, trade facilitation and competition. He also said he did not foresee any agreement on labor issues-except perhaps to refer them to the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Meanwhile, the 15-nation European Union warned on Sunday that if the talks fail to conclude with a new Doha Round, one that sets the parameters for world trade in the new millennium, it would be the developing nations that are worse off. "We have a clear political intent to achieve a new round. It would be good for us, and for the whole world," said a senior EU official. "We've been doing a lot to get developing countries on board, and this is where agriculture is of crucial importance." The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, insisted that the 15 nations in the world's most powerful trading bloc were not "steamrolling" the Doha talks. The days when the US and Europe exercised their will and their muscle, as at the failed talks in Seattle two years ago, "are now behind us, even though in the perception of public opinion and many developing nations, we are the bad boys," the EU official said.

In Apraku's statement to the delegates, delivered late Sunday, he urged them to approve a "slimmer work program ¼ which would not overtax our limited capacity." He also asked them to address the need for "effective technical assistance in capacity building and the resolution of the [developing countries'] implementation problems."

"We need to avoid overloading the work program," he said, "especially with issues of doubtful relevance to the WTO's mandate and adopt a manageable agenda. Our lack of conviction for a broad and expanded agenda is grounded in our experience with the implementation of the results of the Uruguay round. The optimistic assessments and the promise of improvement in market access for developing countries following the round have been belied by the reality."

In his address to the delegates, Apraku welcomed the initiatives taken by WTO Director General Mike Moore in the area of technical cooperation. "However," he said, "if these initiatives are to bear fruit, there should be a fresh look at the pre-Seattle proposal to increase the funding of technical assistance from the regular budget, which seems to have been given scant attention so far. Without increased funding, not matter how brilliant any initiatives are, they will produce no results."

The Europeans came to Doha armed with a silver bullet in the form of Europe's new "EBA" open-market policy, an acronym for "Everything But Arms". The policy was launched earlier this year to help the world's 49 poorest nations export to the giant European market everything and anything they produce except weapons. It drops quotas and tariffs on their food exports, the few manufactured goods these countries produce and even flowers-an industry that employs half a million people in the East African nation of Kenya alone.

"Put it this way," the EU official said. "The figures show that Europe imports from the developing world more than the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand combined. We have a high degree of openness already. There are no tariffs, no quotas against these 49 countries, and we did not ask for something in exchange. And we are prepared to go further. But for that we must have a new round."

The European initiative was backed most notably in Doha by James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, who hailed it as something that "should be emulated by others as soon as possible." The silver bullet, however, has not been well received. Last year farm imports by the EU from all developing countries came to only $31.2 billion, less than 3 percent of world trade-which makes the initiative a "cheap" gesture, according to a spokesman for the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of 77 nations.

Jayen Cuttaree, the Trade Minister of Mauritius, voiced some of these and other concerns when he delivered a speech in Doha on behalf of some of the world's smallest and poorest island nations: "The problems confronting our economies are compounded by our inability to participate actively in the multifaceted WTO processes and to implement and administer WTO agreements effectively," he said. "These small countries have very limited capacity in capitals to formulate and administer trade policy. Most of them either have no mission in Geneva or very small ones. These countries are unable therefore to participate effectively in the rule-making process and securing market access conditions. They do not have the capacity to promote and defend their interests in the WTO in accordance with their national policy objectives."

"Why, for example," asked Zimbabwe's ambassador to the WTO, "do poor nations in Africa, where 85 percent of our people are living in agriculture-based economies, do we get lower prices for commodities like coffee, while in Starbucks the prices keep going up? Why is Germany the world's leading exporter of processed coffee? How can countries with large debts trade competitively?"

A new trade round could mean new, special and differential treatment of the developing countries, the EU official said. "We need more trade and aid," he said, stressing technical assistance to help a coffee producing nation like Brazil, for example, catch up with Germany. We need free trade, and we accept they need a better deal. They are right to make demands of us, but we cannot meeting them all, and the private exchanges have proven extremely useful here."

He said that by far the most contentious issue in Doha so far had been references in the WTO's working draft on export subsidies. "Above all, we need a new round so that we can make the necessary changes to the WTO rules so as to better take into account the needs of developing nations."

In the clash of cultures between the developing world and the big powers, the EU insists that environmental concerns, along with human and civil rights, be made part of the equation-a point stressed by EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy during a visit to the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior on Sunday-but that has drawn considerable invective from some nations that see it as yet another form of protectionism.

"Any attempt to bring such contentious issues into WTO discussions will only serve to widen the dissenting positions," said Malaysian Minister of International Trade and Industry Rafidah Aziz. "Many countries are strongly opposed to bringing those issues into the WTO. Labor standards clearly have no place in the WTO, and no country should attempt to reintroduce it into the present or future discussions. It is for this reason that Malaysia urges the WTO to adopt new approaches when dealing with issues that impinge on sensitive domestic policies."