GENEVA (AP) — The World Trade Organization heads into 2008, its fifth straight ''final year'' for talks on a new global commerce pact, with a dearth of confidence but criticism to spare.
The United States' top negotiator recently compared Brazil and India to irresponsible teenagers excited by their new drivers' licenses. The two emerging powers are calling rich nations ''obnoxious.'' And Europe's trade chief is even jumping ahead of next November's U.S. presidential election by criticizing candidate Hillary Clinton.
''Nobody wants to be left holding the baby, so there's an attempt to shift the blame at all costs,'' said David Woods, a former WTO spokesman now working as an independent consultant. ''There's no doubt that confidence is very low. This is a reflection of the growing sense that a deal is not doable before the U.S. presidential elections. A complete settlement will remain a complete illusion for a couple of years.''
Not so, according to senior WTO officials, who say they remain as committed as ever to a deal that was once promised as a recipe for lifting millions of people worldwide out of poverty and adding billions of dollars (euros) to the global economy.
The trade talks known as the Doha round have repeatedly stalled since their inception in Qatar's capital in 2001, largely because of wrangling over eliminating farm subsidies and tariffs in the rich world and, more recently, barriers to manufacturing trade in developing countries. Countless deadlines have been missed, but negotiators say they are making slow progress on many highly technical issues.
The more aggressive attacks ''could also reflect the fact that we're getting closer to a deal,'' said Keith Rockwell, spokesman for WTO director-general Pascal Lamy. ''People get edgier as the prospect of an agreement gets more real. Next year will be very interesting. Now there is a clear process, a clear outline of what we are going to get.''
The 151-member WTO is pinning its hopes on new compromise proposals by the trade body's chief agriculture and industrial negotiators, which are planned for release in February. After that, members will get another chance to bargain product-by-product, before ministers and top trade representatives are called in to deal with the most politically sensitive issues.
The plan, however, is being derailed by the muddied negotiating authority of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.
The expiration of ''fast track'' authority in June — which allowed the Bush administration to present trade deals to Congress for a simple yes-or-no vote — has made it harder for Washington to move from its entrenched positions. It also has led many countries to question the value in negotiating a deal that U.S. legislators can go through line by line, rolling back concessions and demanding more from others.
''We reach a point where uncertainty on this score will drive everything to a grinding halt,'' Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said last month, backed by Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim.
While their fear is understood by most analysts and observers, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab has laid the blame on Brazil, India and the other emerging countries that have taken on unprecedented responsibility within the global trading system, but refuse to open up their manufacturing markets in exchange for the access they are demanding to farm markets in the U.S. and 27-nation European Union.
''In the advanced teenage years there are responsibilities that come with having that driver's license,'' Schwab told the President's Export Council. She has issued a series of criticisms of Brazil and India in recent months, which have reprised some of the bitterest name-calling since the 2003 collapse of a ministerial trade summit in Cancun, Mexico.
Roberto Azevedo, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry's trade chief, accused Washington and Brussels this week of using the mantra of environmentalism to disguise a ''biased and protectionist'' agenda. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson entered the fray on Wednesday by criticizing Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York for saying she would ''take stock'' of U.S. trade policy as president and examine whether the Doha round was still in best interests of American workers.
Rita Hayes, a former WTO ambassador under the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, said the back-and-forth comments through the media have been counterproductive, because they risk upsetting some of the real advances the talks are making at the technical level.
''There's nothing wrong with saying: 'Look, we've made a lot of headway, but we're not ready yet to move further,''' said Hayes, who was most surprised by the criticism of U.S. presidential candidates with the elections still a year away.
Part of the reason the Doha round has sparked such fierce and prolonged debates is that the final treaty must be agreed on by consensus and will be legally binding on all countries. Those failing to live up to their commitments could be hauled before the WTO's dispute body, where billions of dollars (euros) in sanctions can be awarded.
Woods said the basic chemistry of an agreement has yet to be discovered.
''The U.S. must have a much more impressive deal on the table to convince the lobbies it needs to convince if it is going to win congressional approval,'' he said. ''But it's very difficult for the other players, especially Brazil and India, to put their best on the table when they have no guarantee that the U.S. won't come back for more, or that Congress will even accept it.''