ACP states regret lack of progress in EU trade talks
Dec 8, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The Group of African, Caribbean and Pacific States voiced regret at the lack of progress in talks with the European Union on a new framework for trade between the two blocs.
The 79-member group of some of the world’s poorest nations also hit out at the West over the failure of the Doha trade round, accusing developed nations within the World Trade Organization of refusing to negotiate on their farm subsidies while preaching free trade in other sectors.
In his closing speech, the host of the two-day summit, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, cited US refusal to end subsidies to its cotton producers even though they damage poor cotton-producing countries in the ACP, including Sudan.
ACP heads of state and representatives noted in their final statement the “difficulties that the negotiations with the European Union are undergoing particularly on the development track.”
The 25-member EU is holding talks with ACP members on economic partnership agreements due to come into force in 2008 that would remove the remaining non-reciprocal trade preferences for ACP countries in the European market.
The European Union granted ACP countries tariff-free entry for most of their goods, including farm exports, under the 1975 Lome Convention but the exemptions have since been whittled down except for the least developed nations.
The summit recalled the ACP’s commitment to democracy and condemned this week’s coup in Fiji, a bloc member.
The Sudanese president, who has chaired the ACP for the past two years amid mounting diplomatic isolation over his refusal to admit UN peacekeepers to Darfur, won support from bloc leaders.
The summit praised the “efforts of the Sudanese government to establish a comprehensive peace” in the country, referring to successive peace deals for the south and east of the country, as well as Darfur where a May agreement has yet to take hold.
Beshir hit out at the international community over its policy on Darfur and accused unspecified foreign powers of aiding the holdout rebels of the National Salvation Front.
“There is silence within the international community regarding the actions of the National Salvation Front,” Beshir told reporters.
The front had “received massive support in terms of vehicles and weaponry from across frontiers, allowing it to expand its military operations”, he charged.
Asked about a warning by UN chief Kofi Annan Thursday that the security situation Darfur was deteriorating, Beshir retorted: “Every time we achieve success in Darfur, and information from there shows the situation is getting better, voices are raised that make unjust accusations against us.”
The Sudanese president again took issue with UN estimates that at least 200,000 people have died in Darfur since ethnic minority rebels rose up in early 2003, insisting the toll had yet to be proven.
A determined opponent of UN plans to send peacekeepers to Darfur, Beshir also spoke out against a UN decision to back a regional peacekeeping force for Somalia.
“We reject any such force for the same reasons that we reject an international force in Darfur,” Beshir told the closing session of the summit.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council authorized the deployment of an 8,000-strong east African peacekeeping force to Somalia and eased a 14-year-old arms embargo, drawing warnings of a stepped-up conflict from Islamists.
(AFP)