"India remains firm that negotiations in agriculture should be primarily focused at achieving reform of those domestic support and export subsidy policies which distort markets so heavily," Indian Commerce and Industries Minister Kamal Nath said at a workshop of stakeholders in the run up to the Hong Kong Ministerial meeting of WTO in December this year.

Nath, however, said "We are very clear on our bottom lines. We are willing and wanting to engage constructively but we will not go beyond a point to open up our market for farm products unless developed countries agree to dismantle of subsidies."

"There should be an urgent end to export subsidies and effective and substantial reduction in domestic support provided by developed countries to their farm sectors. These steps must precede market access to developing countries and not the other way round," he said.

He said subsidies by developed countries to their farm sectors depressed international prices of agricultural produce, thereby adversely affecting farmers in developing countries in international trade.

"I see liberalisation as a process aimed at achieving fairness and balance in international trade and particularly the elimination of the distortions that beset trade in agricultural products," the Minister said.

Nath, who attended the WTO ministerial meeting at Dalian, China last week, said the European Union had indicated at that meeting that it would undertake the steepest cuts in domestic support provided "the next heaviest distorters -- the United States and Japan -- accept to undertake at least second order cuts but no lower than that. We support this view."

At the same time, he said, developing countries which do not have any Aggregate Measure of Support commitments such as India could not be required to cut the minimal support extended by them to their vulnerable farm communities.

Nath pointed out that the Doha round of WTO talks and the July 2004 Framework made it explicit that developing countries' commitments in agriculture would be proportionately lower than those of developed countries and that special and differential treatment would be integral to all aspects of negotiations.

The Indian Commerce Minister said "even as the processes of globalization and liberalization are shaping a new system of international economic relations and providing increased opportunities for growth and development, the vulnerability of developing countries has increased" because of "high distortions and protectionist barriers" by developed countries.

"Even though the Uruguay Round agreement on agriculture was meant to be a springboard for reform of global agricultural markets, the results have been modest at best", he said.

"Distortions create asymmetric opportunities for production and export to some, leaving a multitude of poor farmers in developing countries at risk of extreme poverty and even lower standards of living than at present", the Indian Commerce Minister said.

He said India would oppose all attempts by some developed countries to create sub-categories among developing countries as this would only "complicate matters".

"Three fourths of the world's poor live in just four developing countries -- India, China, Indonesia and the Philippines -- all of them non-Least Developed Countries," Nath said.