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World Trade Talks Struggle Over Cheap Drugs Access
By REUTERS GENEVA (Reuters) - World trade talks failed on Monday to make progress on the key issue of how to side-step international patent rules to give poor states facing health emergencies access to cheap drugs, trade sources said. Representatives from the World Trade Organization's145 member states, facing a looming deadline to clinch a deal, did no more than restate long-held positions in the first of three days of talks at the body's Geneva base, the sources said. Trade ministers from 25 WTO members, including a number of developing countries, left a meeting in Australia 10 days ago saying an accord was near, but tying down the details is proving difficult, the sources added. ``Positions seem to be quite hard, but nobody knows whether it is a last gasp before giving ground,'' said one trade official. Health officials say a deal on medicines is vital for the millions of people in developing countries either suffering from or threatened by AIDS and other killer diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. But it is also crucial to the success of the Doha round of global free trade talks, launched in November last year in the Qatari capital to give a boost to the struggling world economy, and which set an accord on drugs by the end of 2002 as its first goal. All countries agree that the poorest states should have ready access to cheap drugs, often versions copied by third world producers of medicines patented by multinationals. But they are split on which countries should get automatic exemption from patent rules, on whether the emergencies warranting exemptions should be largely limited to AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and on whether all this requires a permanent change to trade rules. The United States wants better-off developing countries -- those for example that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- voluntarily to declare that they will not seek any waiver to patent rules. Other rich states also back some form of selection. But developing countries, fearing a policy of divide and rule, oppose any attempt to distinguish between them. ``These diseases do not distinguish between countries, they do not recognize any borders,'' one African delegate said.
Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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