by Pierre Ausseill LIBREVILLE, Nov 15 (AFP) - Several African government ministers meeting here with experts from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and US and EU officials on Wednesday refused to join a new world trade round, saying it would be premature. A number of African delegations, including those from Egypt and Mauritius, have refused to sign a final declaration in favour of a new trade round after three days of discussions, said a trade official close to the negotiations, who requested anonymity. Kenya, Zambia, Botswana and Mauritania then followed suit, to the disappointment of the WTO, the European Union and the United States, which had pressed strongly for the African countries to join a new round of talks. On Wednesday, discussions continued among 51 African countries without a consensus emerging, the trade official told AFP, after closed-door talks had gone on late into the night Tuesday. Some delegates said they had no mandate from their governments to commit their countries firmly to a new trade round. "We are pragmatic and we know ... that one day there will be a new round of negotiations," Magdy Farahat, Egypt's representative at the WTO in Geneva, told AFP. However, African countries will not begin new talks as long as parts of older agreements have not yet been implemented, he added. The EU has been pressing for a new round of negotiations which would add to existing agreements in the agriculture and service industry sectors and extend deals to other areas such as competition policy and investment. "Some African countries are afraid of taking up the new issues since they have already taken a good while to digest the agreements already negotiated in the Uruguay round and are asking for more time to implement them effectively," commented a western expert on condition of anonymity. After the Uruguay round, "we opened up our markets but certain countries (in the northern hemisphere) haven't finished opening up theirs," Farahat said. Gabon's Commerce Minister Alfred Mabika had appealed Monday for a "strong Libreville statement" when the meeting began, but the meeting will now likely end with a simple communique, the member of the African delegation said. The Libreville seminar, organized by the WTO, aimed to give African governments a better understanding of the complexities of WTO agreements to help them negotiate new ones more effectively, according to officials in the organisation. Delegates from the WTO, the EU and the United States have all stressed that technical assistance was being given to African ministers to help them better understand the workings of the WTO, which was set up by the Uruguay Round of discussions held in 1986-1994. Ministers and government experts from 53 African countries have been attending a series of workshops on different aspects of WTO rules and agreements. Forty-one African countries are in the WTO, making up almost a third of the total membership of 139, but the continent accounts for less than two percent of global exports, the organisation has stated. Major WTO talks in Seattle a year ago were aborted with a flare-up between Japan and Europe on one side and the United States on the other over trade protection. The Seattle talks also led to widespread public protest over the terms of world trade, particularly the impact of globalisation on developing countries. pal/nb/gj _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------