Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka has indicated that Japan is ready to be flexible on agriculture, one of the five contentious issues blocking the World Trade Organization from launching a new round of multilateral talks.
Tanaka told a news conference Sunday after a two-day informal meeting of WTO ministers that she will try to "curb" calls by domestic farmers who want the government to continue protecting them.
She said she is ready to limit the influence of Japanese farmers.
Japan, however, will continue to fight a proposal for applying the same rules for industrial goods to farm products, Tanaka said.
She said it is also important that the WTO's fifth ministerial meeting, to be held Nov. 9 to Nov. 13, be successfully concluded. It will be held in Doha, Qatar.
Earlier in the day, trade ministers from 21 members of the WTO ended two days of talks after failing to narrow differences over agriculture and four other key issues -- the environment, the implementation of measures under the 1994 Uruguay Round accord, the creation of new global trade rules, and a review of existing WTO regulations.
These same differences also prevented the WTO from agreeing to launch a new round of trade talks at its fourth ministerial meeting, held in Seattle in 1999. The talks were plagued by antiglobalization riots.
The Cairns Group of major farm-exporting countries, such as Australia and Canada, proposed that the new round make specific commitments, such as abolition of farm export subsidies.