INTERNATIONAL – The deadline for ‘modalities’, or negotiations, on a World Trade Organisation (WTO) agriculture framework was missed this week.

WTO Agriculture committee chair Stuart Harbinson said that he would continue talks, which will affect commodity dairy products, later this month to try to agree on issues such as tariff formulas.

So far, WTO members have found little common ground in the talks, and Harbinson’s second round of suggestions have been attacked for being too similar to the first.

The modalities still to be agreed are to set out the scope of the agriculture negotiations, the methodology to be followed during the actual process, and the end-results expected in the agriculture negotiations.

At WTO Doha round talks, trade ministers agreed to establish modalities by 31 March, with the view to submitting draft country-sepcific offers at talks in Cancun, Mexico, from 10 to 14 September. These were supposed to be based on the modalities, with negotiations due to be complete on 1 January 2005.

In a statement, the EU said that its position is a mid-point between the extremes of other members and hinted that Australian and US practices would have “trade distorting effects”.