PHNOM PENH, 5 September 2003 — Australia won backing yesterday from Southeast Asian countries in its fight to dismantle barriers in agricultural trade, but warned challenges lay ahead in WTO talks in Cancun. Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile spelled out his case against rich nations during consultations with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Phnom Penh.

Vaile said there was a “clear indication” ASEAN shared his government’s view that the World Trade Organization meetings in Mexico should be an avenue to push for export subsidy cuts and market access for developing nations.

Talks in agriculture have stalled over these issues since their launch in Doha two years ago and Australia has vowed to take the lead in farm reform against the United States and European Union next week. “It won’t be easy, there are many diverging views across a range of issues,” Vaile told a news conference in the Cambodian capital.

While he hailed as a breakthrough a recent agreement on medicine access for poor nations, Vaile said much still needed to be done to level the playing field in farm trade.

He noted there had been significant progress in some areas “that does not exist and still does not exist with regard to trade in agricultural commodities across the world.

“We don’t see that as being here. We don’t see that there should be a differential way of treating the market access and trade in agricultural products from industrial goods and services,” he said.

He said Australia wants “an understanding that we got to improve the circumstances in trade in agricultural commodities.” His counterparts from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in a joint statement said they backed Australia.

The statement said the ministers agreed that talks should advance “by substantially improving market access, substantially reducing trade distorting subsidies and eliminating export subsidies.”

Cambodian Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh, who co-chaired the meeting with Vaile, said the discussions were “very candid” and focused on ways for ASEAN and Australia and New Zealand to strengthen cooperation. “We have also taken an exchange of views on WTO matters and preparations for the Cancun meeting,” said Prasidh, whose country is expected to be officially accepted into the WTO next week.

Australia and nine other members of the pro-agriculture reform Cairns Group have vowed to walk away from the Cancun round if talks again stall. If that were to happen, it would effectively freeze negotiations and prevent a multilateral deal and jeopardizing reforms in other sectors, officials said.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, meanwhile, also called on ASEAN nations to ensure that the reform talks are not sidetracked. He told an India-ASEAN trade meeting here that efforts by developing countries to highlight imbalances in multilateral trade get stymied when rich nations link them to “non-trade related issues.” India is an important ASEAN trade partner, and New Delhi’s Commerce Minister Arun Jaitely was in Cambodia this week to affirm his government’s stand in WTO.

US businessmen urged the AESAN ministers meeting to speed up investment and economic integration. American companies see a “window of opportunity” in ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, the US ASEAN Business Council said.

The council is composed of major US firms such as Ford Motor Co. and IBM who have major investments in the region. It said ASEAN should focus on its “plans for regional economic integration” with the end view of creating a single market under an envisioned ASEAN economic community by 2020.

However, they said ASEAN members should begin to move aggressively if the grouping is to corner a major chunk of the foreign investment expected to pour into Asia in the next decade. Among others, American businessmen asked the trade ministers to speed up the implementation of a regional investment area where barriers to investment would be lowered, regulators minimized and incentives increased.