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 The approval came after Cuba dropped a last-gasp threat to veto
the package of measures.
"For the first time in our history, the WTO has truly delivered,"
WTO chief Roberto Azevedo told exhausted ministers after the talks
which had dragged into an extra day on the tropical resort island.
"This time the entire membership came together. We have put the
'world' back in World Trade Organization," he said. "We're back in
business...Bali is just the beginning."
The talks, which had opened on Tuesday, nearly came unstuck at the
last minute when Cuba suddenly refused to accept a deal that would
not help pry open the U.S. embargo of the Caribbean island, forcing
negotiations to drag into Saturday morning.
Cuba later agreed on a compromise with the United States.
TRADE SKEPTICISM
But there was skepticism how much had really been achieved.
"Beyond papering over a serious dispute on food security, precious
little was progress was made at Bali," said Simon Evenett, professor
of international trade at the University of St Gallen in
Switzerland. "Dealing with the fracas on food security sucked the
oxygen out of the rest of the talks."
The talks had begun under a cloud because of an insistence by India
at the outset that it would only back an agreement if there was a
compromise on food subsidies because of its massive program for
stockpiling food to feed its poor.
India, which will holds elections next year, won plaudits at home
for taking a stand on behalf of the world's poor.
An eventual compromise was greeted with jubilation by Trade Minister
Anand Sharma. While India had insisted on a permanent exemption from
the WTO rules, the final text aimed to recommend a permanent
solution within four years.
But the agreement is a milestone for the 159 WTO members, marking
the organization's first global trade agreement since it was created
in 1995.
It also rescues the WTO from the brink of failure and will rekindle
confidence in its ability to lower barriers to trade worldwide,
after 12 years of fruitless negotiations.
The deal would lower trade barriers and speed up the passage of
goods through customs. Analysts estimate that over time it could
boost the world economy by hundreds of billions of dollars and
create more than 20 million jobs, mostly in developing countries.
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It still needs to be approved by each member government.
"It is good for both developed and developing members alike," U.S.
Trade Representative Michael Froman said.
RED TAPE
A study by the Washington, D.C.-based Peterson Institute of
International Economics estimated the agreement would inject $960
billion into the global economy and create 21 million jobs, 18
million of them in developing nations.
The deal slashes red tape at customs around the world, gives
improved terms of trade to the poorest countries, and allows
developing countries to skirt the normal rules on farm subsidies if
they are trying to feed the poor.
The ministers had gathered with a clear warning that failure to
reach agreement in Bali would turn the WTO into an irrelevance and
trigger a rush towards regional and bilateral trade pacts.
It came almost 20 years to the day since a similar nail-biting
conclusion to another marathon negotiation — the talks to agree the
creation of the WTO itself, which wrapped up in mid-December 1993.
That was the last global trade deal.
The Bali meeting was also noticeable for its lack of anti-WTO
protests compared to the street battles when ministers met in
Seattle 14 years ago.
The Bali accord will help revive confidence in the WTO's ability to
negotiate global trade deals, after it consistently failed to clinch
agreement in the Doha round of talks that started in 2001 and proved
hugely over-ambitious.
As the Doha round stuttered to a halt, momentum shifted away from
global trade pacts in favor of regional deals such as the
Trans-Pacific Partnership that the United States is negotiating with
11 other countries, and a similar agreement it is pursuing
bilaterally with the European Union.
(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva, Writing by Jonathan
Thatcher; editing by Michael Perry)
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