Cancun: After successfully pushing their case on agriculture, 70 developing countries on September 12 made a strong case for not bringing new issues like investment and competition rules into the work programme of WTO even as European Union and Japan pressed for commencement of negotiations.

A new alliance of Group of 16 developing countries including India and Malaysia formed on September 11 to oppose the Singapore issues, met today on the second day of the WTO ministerial to oppose bringing these issues into the work programme of WTO.

Besides Investment and Competition, Singapore issues comprise Trade facilitation and Transparency in government procurement.

Speaking on behalf of the Group, Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz told a news conference that about 70 developing countries are totally opposed to bringing in these issues into the WTO.

As they needed further clarifications, there could not be any explicit consensus on these issues to work out modalities for starting negotiations at Cancun.

"There cannot be any trade-off", she said ruling out any unbundling of these four issues as a via-media to start negotiations on two of the less contentious issues of trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement.

Attacking European Union for trying to link agriculture negotiations to developing countries agreeing to start negotiations on Singapore issues, she said, "It would be very selfish on the part European Union if they tried to do so."

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