Ministers discuss trade as Kenyan police arrest protestors

The meeting, held on 3 and 4 March, drew ministers from 33 WTO
member-states. It was intended to give political guidance and cement
political will in the trade negotiation process ahead of another major
ministerial conference in Hong Kong later this year, organisers said.

"We are committed to a successful sixth WTO ministerial conference, which
will be held later this year in Hong Kong, as well as setting the stage
for the final phase of the Doha round in 2006," Mukhisa Kituyi, the Kenyan
minister for trade and industry, said at a news conference.

"It has been a successful round of negotiations - difficult at some
stages, but on the whole, the political will is now strong," Kituyi later
told IRIN in Mombasa.

The Doha round of talks began in Qatar in 2001, with the intention of
harmonising a global policy for the liberalisation of world trade. The
2003 Cancun round of talks collapsed amid disagreements between developed
and developing countries over agricultural subsidies.

The Mombasa meeting, organizers said, was intended to smooth over any
controversial issues that could disrupt the Hong Kong meeting.

"On agriculture, there is still a lot of discussion and negotiation to go
and I want that to continue," Peter Mandelson, the European Union's (EU's)
trade commissioner, told a news conference.

"[Discussions on] non-agricultural market access and services have to
catch up, but this should be done without holding back much-needed
progress on agriculture," the EU commissioner added.

Mandelson called on all industrialised countries to join the EU in
committing themselves to providing duty and quota-free market access to
the least developed countries (LDCs).

Some LDCs had claimed that the developed world was carrying out "trade
distorting practices" because of the farm export subsidies they provided
to their farmers.

"To us [LDCs], trade is life and widespread poverty in Africa is a result
of imbalanced, multilateral trade practices," Mannaseh Nshuti, Rwanda's
trade minister, said ahead of the conference.

At the end of the meeting, Nshuti told IRIN: "Progress has been slow, but
it is being made. We made some concessions and we got some concessions. It
is a negotiation and we are very optimistic about a good result for LDCs
in Hong Kong."

The conference was, however, marred by the arrest of 41 people who had
attempted to protest what they perceived to be unfair trade practices by
the developed world.

The protestors, many of whom were members of NGOs, carried placards
emblazoned with slogans against farm subsidies. They engaged in clashes
with the police before they were arrested and taken to jail.

Several human rights organisations criticised the Kenyan government for
the arrests, calling them a violation of the protestors' right to free
speech.

"We are saying the same thing the government is saying - I don't know why
they should disperse us," Oduor Ongwen, former chair of the National
Conference of NGOs, who led the demonstration, told journalists.

Meanwhile, the WTO has upheld its earlier decision to stop the US from
subsidising its cotton farmers, saying the practice depressed world
prices. The decision was lauded by NGOs as a victory for LDCs,
particularly West African nations, which had been particularly hard-hit by
the subsidies.

The Mombasa conference followed another meeting in January of WTO
ministers on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, at which a decision was made to speed up the negotiations of
the Doha round and reach a broad consensus by July.