There is news tonight from the Belize delegation at the World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong. The European Union has committed to Belize and other African, Caribbean and Pacific countries that it will defend the preferential banana regime at the world trade organization. This commitment was given in an informal meeting between the EU and ACP leaders. The ACP leaders asked the EU to remove the quota restriction on ACP imports. The EU's position is that the banana issue will not be resolved at the Hong Kong meeting but it will provide ACP countries with bilateral assurances that their interests will be protected which is encouraging, but hardly the bullet proof support that vulnerable economies are really asking for.
And apart from lobbying with the ACP, the Belize delegation has also teamed up with the G33, a group of developing countries to demand that developing countries address issues of rural development, poverty alleviation and special treatment for vulnerable economies. These and many, many more mini-agendas continue to be pursued even as, generally, the meetings continue to be deadlocked mainly because developed countries particularly the United States refuse to commit a drastic scaling back of domestic farm subsidies. And all this unfolds as angry and mounting protests continue outside the Hong Kong Convention Center.
