"We fear the inclusion of non-trade issues in the WTO agenda carry the danger of turning the organisation into a new leviathan which can crush, under its intensive weight, the developmental priorities of a large proportion of mankind," commerce minister Ramakrishna Hegde said.

"While we affirm our commitment to core labour standards, we reject any attempt to introduce such measures into trade with the covert objective of denying comparative cost advantages to developing countries," he said addressing the third trade and economic ministers meeting of the Group of 15 countries here. On the services negotiations at WTO, Hegde said India would seek substantial liberalisation in movement of personnel and removal of invisible barrierserected by the developed countries on services exports.The trade and economic ministers meeting precedes the G-15 summit in which India is expected to spearhead developing countries' initiative to reform the global financial system and ward off east Asian type crisis. There should be a "genuine and universal resolve" to achieve core labour standards in all countries and the objective should be attained through supportive rather than trade-linked punitive action, Hegde said.

He also felt that the talk of negotiations for a multilateral framework on investment appeared "premature" particularly when the developing countries are encouraging foreign direct investment autonomously acceding to their long-term developmental needs, he added. Underlining the need for better market access for agro-products of developing countries, Hegde said fresh negotiations under the agreement on agriculture and general agreement on trade in services (GATS) should commence as mandated after January 1, 2000.Such negotiations as alsomandated reviews of other agreements should not be advanced or the issues involved therein be prejudged, he said adding developing countries need to be provided requisite flexibility within the agreement so that food and employment security is given to the agrarian poor. Hegde regretted that the greater opportunity and access by the developed countries to the agricultural products of interest to developing countries as mandated in the GASP agreement have not been provided as yet.He also wanted generalised system of preferences (GSP) to be extended to new areas including services, technology transfer, intellectural property rights (IPRS) and performance requirements under trade related investment measures (TRIMS).

An expert group amongst G-15 countries can be constituted to suggest ways and means of extending GSP concept to the new areas, he said. A recent study by UNCTAD has estimated that a 30 per cent tariff concession across the board in GSTP is likely to result in increased trade in the range of $7.4 to$8.5 billion representing a eight to nine per cent increase in the mutual trade of generalised system of trade preferences (GSTP) participants. The ministers of the second ministerial conference of WTO adopted a declaration in the general council of WTO to commence a work programme on the subject of global electronic commerce for making recommendations to third ministerial conference. "We are of the view that the programme must examine, inter-alia, how the growing importance of E-commerce in the conduct of international trade would impact upon the trade and development opportunities of developing countries," he said.

The programme should also examine the revenue and other fiscal implications of E-commerce for developing countries, erosion of market access of developing countries and implications of intellectual property regimes vis-a-vis electronic commerce and technology access at affordable cost, he said. Hegde was critical of the continuation of high domestic subsidies by many developed countries onagriculture and use of anti-dumping measures increasingly as a weapon to protect industries in the industrialised world. These were violations of special dispensation for developing countries provided for in WTO agreements on subsidies and countervailing measures.