. /.WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/MIN(99)/ST/153
30 November 1999
(99-5377)
MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
Third SessionSeattle, 30 November - 3 December 1999Original:  Spanish
ARGENTINA
Statement by H.E. Mr. Guido Di Tella
Minister for Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship
I should like to express our sincere gratitude to the Government and people of the
United States, particularly those living in Seattle, for their generous hospitality and for providing the
setting for this Third Ministerial Conference of the WTO.
Although the Government I represent will be tr ansferring power within ten days to the new
authorities elected by popular vote, to be headed by Dr. Fernando de la Rua, I can assure you that the
delegation of the Argentine Republic is fully determined to maintain the priorities and approaches it
put forward in the preparatory work for this Conf erence.  The number and rank of the representatives
of our society who have come to this meeting, as well as the opinions canvassed in consultations over
the past few months, clearly reveal the high degree of interest, priority and consensus regarding theagenda proposed for the next round of negotiations.
We all hope that at this Conference it will be possible to agree on the most efficient way of
strengthening the WTO.  Experience tells us that the only satisfactory response to the challenges of
the globalized world and the serious impact of the financial crisis, still present in ours and other
regions of the world, is to keep markets open an d afford each other growing opportunities for trade
and investment.  This must be the round that will create a modern dimension to development andensure that the developing countries can truly be nefit from the advantages of trade liberalization.
It is difficult for our country to remain quiet about the attitude of some of our main trading
partners regarding the Marrakesh commitments and the direction that the future negotiations must
take, especially after paying a high price to arrive at such agreements. To Argentina, whichconsolidated the obligation to preserve its generous unilateral opening of trade in goods and services,
as well as to provide a comparatively ambitious degree of protection for intellectual property, the
protectionist obsession discernible in the proposals of some of the most prominent members of the
OECD seems neither acceptable nor rational.  Those members should be at the forefront of this new
stage in the liberalization of trade, and not disrupt the process.
This remarkable political paradox cannot make us forget that we must use the negotiations to
correct, as laid down by the Agreement establishing the WTO, the unacceptable imbalances and the
lack of fairness that still persist in the system.  The greatest of those imbalances is the discriminatory
and unambitious treatment which characterizes the market access rules and conditions that apply toagriculture.  No other trade sector, not even highly penalized textile products, is subject to so much
uncertainty and penalization after five decades of the multilateral system.
For Argentina, where agricultural exports account for over 50 per cent of export earnings,
correcting this imbalance is a matter of State.  Ag riculture with low prices and no opportunities for
expansion is an attack on its economic viability.  In the face of this threat, we frankly cannotWT/MIN(99)/ST/153
Page 2
understand or accept the grounds put forward by certain pro-OECD countries when they seek
irresponsibly to block a far-reaching renegotiation of the Agreement on Agriculture.
The advocates of these ideas are fuelling uncertainty in the world food supply, and this will
then be wrongly attributed to alleged market defects.   They will say that the crisis they are fomenting
demonstrates that security in food supply and food sufficiency must be synonymous, even in the case
of the industrialized economies which practise aggressive mercantilism in trade with endless
surpluses.  In view of the undeniable drama of hunger experienced by many regions throughout the
world, to impose a logic geared to agricultural disciplines which seek first to adopt subjects such as
preservation of the rural landscape as a universal lifestyle, seems to us at the very least to be frivolous
and far removed from minimum standards of civilized cooperation and solidarity.
The ultimate expression of this protectionist approach is the so-called multi-functionality of
agriculture and the host of accompanying excuses, with which attempts are being made to perpetuate
the existence of subsidies that distort production and trade. We have similar reservations about the
explanations by those who are blocking the approval  of disciplines on agricultural export credits in
flagrant non-compliance with a legal obligation and as a clear attack on the incomes of ruralproducers throughout the world, including those working on their own territory.  On what moral
authority can those who have been deliberately sabotaging this negotiation for over two years demand
good behaviour from the other WTO partners regarding their remaining obligations?
Dear colleagues, we are here to adopt decisions which will strengthen, not destroy, this
system.  Argentina wishes to make a constructive contribution so that this will be the final outcome of
our work.  We sincerely hope that collective efforts will achieve this goal
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