Ministers discuss trade as Kenyan police arrest protestors

World leaders are committed to reaching consensus on the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) trade liberalisation process, trade ministers meeting in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa said on Friday. 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.