With agriculture issues sowing the seeds of discord, battle lines have been drawn between the developed and developing countries ahead of the World Trade Organisation's Cancun Ministerial beginning on September 10.
"It is clearly going to be a battle between phased elimination of domestic support and export subsidies in developed countries and reduction of farm tariff in developing countries," a top government official said in New Delhi.
The developed countries should reduce domestic support and export subsidies on agriculture first as this was the cause for high tariffs in developing countries, he said.
Asked about India's approach and concerns at WTO, Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitley said the agriculture reform process globally has to start first by removing distortions.
Refuting allegations that India was adopting a defensive strategy, Jaitley said New Delhi followed a very offensive and positive agenda.
"We have a very offensive agenda regarding reduction in subsidies," Jaitley said.
To the US move to unbundle Singapore issues, Jaitley said India was categorical in opposing all the four issues at the negotiating table of WTO.
The four Singapore issues comprise trade and investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation.
Jaitley said more than 75 developing countries were opposed to Singapore issues.
Sixteen countries led by India, China and Malaysia have sought clarifications from the General Council on how the Singapore issues would be dealt with before any modalities for the negotiations were agreed upon through explicit consensus.
Meanwhile, official sources said it was not only investment and competition but also transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation on which the parameters for negotiations were unclear.
The Cabinet Committee on WTO is to meet on Friday to give final shape to India's strategy at the WTO Ministerial beginning at Cancun on Septembr 10.
EU adopts divide and rule policy
European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy accused India of trying to create an artificial North-South divide, which was non-existent at WTO negotiations.
Just a week ahead of WTO's Ministerial at Cancun, Lamy said via global video conference from Brussels that EU saw no rationale in Brazil and India coming together on agriculture when they had divergent interests in the sector.
While US and EU had several commonalities on agriculture for them to come together, Lamy said India did not support liberalisation in agriculture like Brazil which was a farm exporting country.
Lamy said India had one of the highest tariffs among the developing countries when compared to their tariff structure particularly with regard to industrial products.
