The Hindu Business Line : BJP hails Jaitley parleys in run-up to WTO meet

THE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has hailed the process of wide-ranging consultations with political parties initiated by the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, in the run-up to the fifth ministerial of the WTO scheduled to be held at Cancun in Mexico next month.

At an interactive session with BJP representatives held at the Udyog Bhawan, the BJP President, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, said the consultations the NDA Government had initiated with all political parties to ascertain their views on various WTO issues that have a direct bearing on the country's trade and development were very important because "we go to Cancun as a nation and not as a political party or group". "The issue in WTO is one of national interest. It's not a political matter," he said.

Explaining the issues of interest to India in the ongoing WTO negotiations in the context of Cancun, Mr Jaitley emphasised that the interests of farmers would be of paramount importance and added India could not give its farmers the kind of subsidy that the developed countries were giving; as such, the developed world should reduce and eliminate their subsidies. Second, India has to give reasonable tariff protection to its farmers, besides additional tariff protection for sensitive items and special safeguards to stop surge in imports, he said.

The Minister also outlined India's concerns and interests in other areas such as non-agricultural market access, TRIPs and public health and Singapore issues, including investment.

The BJP presented a paper to the Minister in which several suggestions had been advanced to protect India's interests on the ongoing multilateral talks for evolving modalities for various agreements. The party clearly stated that the Government should not repeat past mistakes in respect of national interests. Member-countries should be reminded that WTO has been set up to facilitate trade and as such, linking issues such as investment, labour standards, environment with trade would amount to interference in the member-countries' sovereign rights to formulate domestic economic policies, the party paper said.

The representatives of BJP included Dr Jagdish Shettigar, Mr Balbir Punj, Mr Tarun Vijay, Dr J.P. Gupta and Mr Gopal Aggarwal.

Earlier, the Left parties in their interaction with the Minister stressed the need to mobilise support of like-minded parties, especially with Asian countries including China, with a view to forming pressure groups on critical issues in the WTO, as also the need for strengthening India's economic diplomacy in the area of multilateral trade.

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