By Bruce Odessey
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Ministers from industrialized and selected developing countries will hold two sessions in Paris in mid-May to review progress so far in World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, a State Department official says.

The first session comes early May 16 as part of the second day program of the 30-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) annual ministers' meeting, the official said in a May 9 interview.

He said the OECD has invited ministers from more than a dozen non-member countries and markets to participate in the session on trade and development. Invited were ministers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Russia, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa and Uganda.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick is expected to focus in part on the importance of moving forward successfully in the negotiation to remove barriers to agricultural trade, he said.

The official indicated he expected discussion of the farm bill that passed the U.S. Congress just May 8, a bill embraced by President Bush that will substantially increase government subsidies to U.S. farmers.

He emphasized that the farm bill subsidies will not exceed the cap set for the United States under the existing WTO agreement and will still represent much less subsidization than that spent in the European Union (EU) and Japan, for example.

He said also the farm bill demonstrates forcefully the importance of negotiating a WTO agreement to bring subsidies down.

Zoellick and Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, are expected to emphasize the importance of developing country participation in WTO negotiations, he said.

The official said the U.S. delegation will also reiterate the message from the March UN International Conference on Financing and Development in Monterrey, Mexico -- that actions taken by developing countries to free up and use their own resources are as important as grants and loans from wealthy countries.

He said he expected no new initiatives on development out of the OECD meeting. Development issues are expected to get more attention at the World Food Summit in Rome and G-8 annual summit meeting in Canada, both in June, and at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development starting in August.

When the OECD meeting ends, trade ministers from some OECD and some non-OECD countries will participate in another session, a briefing by WTO Director-General Mike Moore, an Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) official said.

Besides reviewing progress in the negotiations, the USTR official said, Moore is expected to discuss progress on technical assistance and capacity building for developing countries and preparations for the WTO ministers' meeting in mid-2003.

Leading the U.S. delegation to the OECD meeting will be Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). The State Department official said one of the issues scheduled for discussion May 15 relates in part to the Enron scandal in the United States -- the risks to the international system from corporate misbehavior.