Reuters
January 10, 2003

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick heads to Africa next week for meetings aimed at expanding trade with the world's poorest continent.

But he is also likely to face criticism that the United States is trying to wriggle out of an agreement it made in November 2001 to guarantee poor countries have access to cheap medicines.

The second annual U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa trade and economic cooperation meeting Jan. 15-17 in Mauritius comes shortly after the collapse of World Trade Organization talks on the medicine issue last month in Geneva.

African and other developing countries accuse the United States of trying to narrow the scope of an agreement that was critical to launching a new round round of world trade talks at the WTO's last ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar.

The United States says the Doha Declaration was intended to cover diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other grave epidemics.

It accuses other WTO members, such as India and Brazil that have drug manufacturing industries, of trying to expand the declaration so they can produce and export generic versions of more profitable patented drugs like Viagra.

Developing countries have been helped by activist groups such as Health Gap and Medecins Sans Frontieres who say the United States is putting drug company profits ahead of saving lives.

"(President) Bush wants a narrow agreement that sacrifices the interest of the sick and the poor under the strict direction of his cronies in the pharmaceutical industries, all while claiming it's what's best for Africa," Asia Russell, Health Gap international policy director, told reporters.

The Bush administration and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry argue that strong patent protections serve a vital purpose by providing companies with the profit incentive to developing new life-saving drugs.

PATENT COMPROMISE

On Wednesday, European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy proposed a compromise that would call on the World Health Organization to judge when a country is faced with a public health crisis that requires it to override drug patents and get imports of cheap generic drugs.

Zoellick called the proposal a "constructive contribution," but stopped short of embracing the idea.

However, a trade official for Kenya, who led the Africa Group of nations in the Geneva negotiations, rejected any limitations on the scope of diseases to be covered.

"That is not the route we should follow. We should go back to the basics, to the assignment that we were given. Is it to define the scope of disease coverage? No, it is not," said Nelson Ndirangu, a senior envoy at the Kenyan trade mission.

Sherman Katz, a trade scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the United States has demonstrated a lot of flexibility on the drug patent issue.

"I think the U.S. understandably has said we're prepared to help, but we've got to put some limitations on this. AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis seem to be reasonable limitations right now," Katz said.

Before heading to Mauritius, a tiny island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, Zoellick will stop in Pretoria Monday for a ceremony launching free trade talks with South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.

Those negotiations will formally begin in February. They are one of several sets of free trade talks the Bush administration is pursuing with trading partners around the world.