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By Vivian Fernandes , CNBC-TV18

 

The finger pointing and the blame game has resumed at the WTO (World Trade Organization) meeting in Geneva. Trade ministers have briefly broken up their meeting, to meet once again. Without naming them the US has accused India and China of unraveling the talks. India says it is the US that is digging in its heels.

 

The WTO talks at Geneva have gone into the second week, with about 30 trade ministers staying behind indicating the importance that they attach to them. The WTO secretariat is releasing the revised texts reflecting the convergence achieved so far in agricultural goods and industrial products. But the texts also have blank spaces denoting disagreements. The United States Trade representative, Susan Schwab, has blamed large emerging nations, without naming them, for those blank spaces, drawing a sharp reaction from India's commerce minister.

 

Kamal Nath , Commerce Minister, "We are large, everybody knows that, we are emerging, everybody knows that, if that is the case so be it."

 

India, China and a large number of other developing countries have objections to the safeguards against import surges. An effective remedy will have to wait till imports surge by 40 percent by volume, a trigger they think is too high. To lower cotton subsidies the US wants China to lower import duties. It wants the large developing countries to abolish import duties on automobiles, chemicals and textiles, while itself taking 10 years to lower high duties on items of interest to India and China, that is textiles and garments. Though there is agreement on many issues, unless some of these politically sensitive issues are settled, the talks could be back to where they were.

 

Kamal Nath, said, ""We have issues on NAMA (non-agricultural market access), we are opposed to anti-concentration, we want to protect our auto sector. We have given nothing and got nothing because nothing is settled yet. "

Time is wearing out, patience is wearing thin. The developing countries say they have yielded a lot, but have got little in return, though these talks were supposed to address their developmental concerns. With just a few days left, the finger-pointing has begun.