Brazil’s Nazi reference threatens WTO talks

SOME pre-negotiation jabbing turned into a potentially damaging diplomatic incident when Brazil’s foreign minister said rich countries’ deception in trade talks reminded him of tactics used by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

The controversy threatens to overshadow this week’s last-ditch effort to save seven years of frustrating talks on a new global trade pact toward alleviating global poverty.

The comments by Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim drew a rebuke from the US, whose chief trade negotiator, Susan Schwab, is the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors. Her spokesman described the reference to Goebbels as “incredibly wrong”.

Amorim said the US, Europe and other wealthy economies have so frequently misrepresented the talks that public perception has become warped.

“Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth,” said Amorim.

Poorer countries have demanded cuts in the farm tariffs and subsidies used by wealthy countries, saying they hinder Third World development. In exchange, rich countries have insisted on better market access in developing countries for their manufacturers and service providers.

Amorim implied rich countries were employing Goebbels’ lying tactics in describing the agricultural concessions they claim they are willing to make, while criticising poorer countries for refusing to liberalise their industrial markets.

Amorim’s spokesman Ricardo Neiva Tavares later said the minister “regrets if Susan Schwab or anyone else was upset by his comments on a historical fact”.