Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Developed and developing nations are playing the blame game over trade talks which fell apart on Tuesday. While Japan, China and India pointed fingers at each other, the EU and U.S also faced off.

Japan blamed China and India for not shouldering greater responsibilities in the WTO as emerging nations, the dragon and tiger said talks collapsed ultimately because the United States and the European Union ( also Japan’s allies) were unwilling to scrap huge subsidies they pay their farmers.

“Frankly, I’d have to wonder whether China and India weighed their words and actions commensurate with their responsibility and how much they considered the overall global economy as they focused too much on their own interests,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told the Guardian.

The criticism may sting, but the two Asian giants aren’t likely to succumb to overseas pressure. In retaliation, China’s Commerce Minister and head of its delegation to the Doha Round, Chen Deming, said major developed countries were the biggest beneficiaries of the talks as they set aside a large space for farm subsidies. Developed countries need to fully understand the core concerns of developing nations and should not hinder the settlement of these problems, he told Xinhua.

India’s trade minister, Kamal Nath, accused the United States of putting the livelihoods of a billion of the world’s poorest people against “commercial interests”.

Further, even though India and China stood together against the developed nations, they didn’t refrain from blaming each other for the failure of trade talks. The two emerging asian nations don’t see eye to eye about relations with the U.S., meanwhile, China has been a longtime supporter of Pakistan, India’s bitter rival. And Indians look enviously at China’s manufacturing strength, while Chinese want to replicate India’s IT services success.

China, chided India for the way the talks ended in what Commerce Minister Chen Deming called “tragic failure”. Chen expressed his regret that the talks had foundered over differences between two countries — a reference to the United States and India — over a proposal to help poor farmers cope with import surges.

Nonetheless, Kamal Nath, who has now gained iconic status in India for standing up to the developed world told the Guardian “The most important thing was the livelihood security, the vulnerability of poor farmers, which could not be traded off against the commercial interests of the developed countries.” He said his position was supported by 100 countries, representing a billion subsistence farmers.

It was not only Asian countries that faced off against each other, the EU and U.S also pointed fingers at each other.

The European Union’s trade chief Peter Mandelson said on Wednesday the United States helped to bring down global trade talks this week when its negotiators shunned a compromise proposal at a key juncture in the talks.

The United States hit back and accused the EU of having tried to undo a carefully crafted set of compromises because it was under fire from European governments including France, Reuters reported.

The talks - the latest attempt to complete the seven-year-long trade round - collapsed late on Tuesday, over India’s insistence that developing countries must be able to protect their agricultural sector against sudden surges of subsidised imports from the US and EU.