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Brazil regrets
failure of WTO agriculture talks
The Brazilian
government expressed its disappointment on
Tuesday over the failure of the Doha Round
negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
caused by lack of agreement over the
agricultural issue.
The deadline
for agreement came on Monday.
In a communiqué
released by the Brazilian Foreign Ministry,
Brazil asked its partners including the
European Union (EU), Japan and the United
States, who had hampered negotiations on
agricultural subsidies, to reconsider their
positions.
"The lack
of a pro-negotiation disposition among
developed countries, which continue providing
heavy subsidies to their agricultural
production and deny access to their markets,
prevented negotiations from producing results
in the established deadlines," said the
communiqué published on Tuesday by the local
press.
The WTO set the
deadline of March 31 to establish the
framework for farm trade liberalization. But
the deadline was overtaken as farm produce
exporters and importers remained widely
divided.
Clodoaldo
Hugueney, undersecretary general for economic
and trade affairs with the Foreign Minister,
told the press that the WTO failure would
affect the progress of other commercial
negotiations such as the Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA), and agreement between the
South American Common Market (MERCOSUR) and
the EU.
"The trend
is that we now make minimalist offers in the
negotiation and reconsider our participation
in some discussions," Hugueney said. The
failure to meet the deadline could compromise
the coming round of WTO negotiations in
Cancun, Mexico, set for September, and delay
the whole Doha Round, which was scheduled to
be completed by 2005.
The global
agricultural trade talks began in March 2000
and were incorporated into a new round of
multilateral trade talks launched in Doha in
November 2001, with an overall deadline of
Jan.1, 2005.
American
Airlines to lay off 2,500 pilots
American
Airlines, the largest carrier in the United
States, will lay off 2,500 pilots, or 20
percent of the total, over the next year as it
tries to avoid bankruptcy, officials of the
airlines' pilot union said on Tuesday.
The move is
part of the pilot union's 660-million-dollar
concessions to save the world's largest
airline, said John Darrah, president of the
13,000-member Allied Pilots Association.
American
Airlines has 12,000 pilots on its payroll and
they have 14 days to ratify the new contract.
The airlines has lost nearly 5.3 billion
dollars in the past two years and is on the
brink of bankruptcy.
As part of an
agreement reached between the airlines and
three unions on Monday to avoid the
bankruptcy, salaries for pilots, mechanics and
flight attendants will also be slashed by 15
percent or more in the coming years.
Amnesty
demands US for inquiry into Iraqi civilian
killing
The
London-based Amnesty International on Tuesday
urged the United States to start an
independent and thorough inquiry into the
killing of seven women and children at a US
military checkpoint at Najaf, 150 kilometers
south of Iraq.
"US
authorities must conduct an independent and
thorough investigation into an attack
yesterday (Monday) on a civilian vehicle that
resulted in the deaths of seven women and
children," said a press release issued by
the human rights watchdog.
"Anyone
suspected of unlawfully killing civilians must
be brought to justice," it read.
"The
military must implement measures that will
safeguard the lives of civilians and other
noncombatants and ensure that incidents like
this are never repeated," it noted.
The group's
remarks came as General Richard Myers,
chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff,
Tuesday expressed his regrets to shooting in
the day. "I'd like to express our regrets
to the families of the Iraqis killed yesterday
at the checkpoint near Al Najaf. The loss of
any innocent life is truly tragic," he
said.
On Monday
afternoon, in the desert near the town of
Najaf, seven Iraqi women and children huddled
in a car died in a hail of US bullets certain
to fuel anti-American sentiment through the
Arab world.
According to
latest figures from the Iraqi government, at
least 653Iraqi civilians have been killed
since the US and British troops launched the
war against Iraq on March 20.
Mexico urges
UN role in Iraq's reconstruction
Mexico, which
began to serve as UN Security Council
president for the month of April on Tuesday,
has stressed a UN role in post-war Iraq.
The
reconstruction of Iraq "should not be
managed by one, two or three countries. It
should be undertaken by the United Nations
instead," Mexican Foreign Minister Luis
Derbez said in a statement published by the
local press on Tuesday.
Derbez said his
country will make efforts to provide
humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people
and strengthen the international order.
Mexico assumed
the Security Council presidency at a time when
the council had been seriously split over the
military action staged by the United States
and Britain against Iraq without a UN mandate.
"We will
try to get the council working again, to come
up with resolutions by consensus that are
positive" for Iraq and its people, said
the foreign minister.
Iraq
withdraws from IPU conference in Chile
Iraqi
parliament speaker Saadun Hammadi has canceled
his planned trip to Chile for the annual
meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)
set to open here Sunday.
Iraq officially
informed the organizers of the conference on
Tuesday that it would not participate in this
event.
Hammadi and a
delegation of 10 from Iraq said in a letter to
their country's embassy in Brazil that they
would be unable to attend "due to the
United States invasion," the union said
in a statement.
International
legislators, including an Israeli delegation,
began arriving in Chile on Tuesday.
Organizers said
last Friday that the Iraqi lawmakers had
already left their country under assault by
US-led troops, but in this letter, the Iraqi
delegation also canceled their hotel
reservations.
The 108th IPU
conference will take place on April 6-12 in
the Diego Portales Conventions Center with the
participation of about 1,200 foreign
lawmakers.
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