The United States on Friday said India, Brazil and China need to play a more "responsible" role at the Doha Round of Talks of the World Trade Organisation, commensurate with the benefits they have realised from global liberalisation over the last several years.
US Trade Representative Ambassador Ron Kirk said at a news conference in Paris on Thursday the WTO members need to adopt a more realistic negotiating paradigm on the Doha Talks, which aim to reduce tariff ceilings for agricultural and
industrial goods, cap allowable farm subsidies and liberalise trade in services.
Kirk was in Paris to meet with trade ministers responsible for the WTO Doha Round.
The round of trade negotiations, which began in 2001, have failed to make any headway on account of the divergent views espoused by developed countries and less developed nations on the issue of agricultural trade policies.
Kirk noted that there was still acrimony over the earlier Uruguay Round of Talks on agricultural policy, where the US and European Union were accused to closeting themselves away
to negotiate an outcome that was adopted by the body in 1994.
However, Kirk claims that everybody benefited from the Uruguay round. "The reality is it took that type of very difficult decision-making by the two dominant economies at the time to get the world to get to the Uruguay Round," he said.
"If you look at the benefits and the change of the economies in those LDCs between that periods of time, you can say that the world has greatly benefited from that," he added.
"The reality, and we happen to think it's a welcome reality, is that now there's three more chairs at the table.
The real question is whether India and Brazil and China, frankly, are ready to assume a role and responsibility commensurate with their benefits that have been realised under global liberalisation over the last several years," Kirk said.
"We can talk around it, but that's the only way this is going to happen. That is an observation that has now been made by more members that were sitting around the table this
morning than just the United States," he said.