In Doha, you were either with the free-traders or 'terrorists'. The equation had shifted by the time the World Trade Organisation (WTO) got to Cancun. The developing world upped the ante at the "fifth ministerial" of the WTO at Cancun, Mexico. The meeting was declared a failure. It was the occasion when developing countries finally said 'no' to a top-down mode of negotiation and agreement with respect to reforms in agriculture, trade, market access, improvement for non-agricultural items, and the launch of negotiations on competition, investment and so on. The unity in the negotiating positions of the developing countries, forged strictly on economic lines, was a surprise to many on both sides of the north-south divide. For these three-fourths of the WTO membership, entertaining the 'hope' of benefits purportedly accruing at some stage of their economic growth from decisions arrived at in multilateral fora, was not particularly 'rational' when contrasted with the perennially suffering domestic constituency back in their countries.
From day one of the Cancun meeting, the WTO member nations disagreed on practically all items on the agenda. The European Union (EU), the main demandeur for the inclusion of these issues, was more interested in bundling the issues of competition policy, investment, trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement (collectively known as the 'Singapore issues') without actually wanting to give up its 'mothering' of the agricultural lobby back home. Despite the EU and Japan trying their best to start negotiations on these issues, the G-21 (group of developing countries led by India, Brazil, China and South Africa) made it clear that they were not ready to start negotiations on any of the new issues unless there was tangible progress in the areas of agriculture, implementation issues and review of provisions for Special and Differential (S&D) treatments for developing countries (Pakistan joined the G-21 at a later stage in the conference).
First discussed in 1996 in Singapore (from which it gets its name), these issues were again brought up in Doha in 2001, after the failure of the Seattle ministerial in 1999. However, India took a strict position and it was on the insistence of India that the Doha Ministerial Declaration mandated the members to decide in Cancun by "explicit consensus" whether or not to start negotiations on the Singapore issues. Following the Doha procedures, the chair of the conference appointed group facilitators or "friends of the chair" who had to moderate the discussion and report back to Heads of Delegations (HOD). The facilitator for the Singapore issues, Canadian Trade Minister, Pierre Pettigrew, reported to the HODs that there was no consensus among the members and suggested that the way forward should be to find a compromise solution somewhere in between. While the majority of the developing countries remained firm on their stance, the EU continued to insist that negotiations had already been launched in this area in the Doha Declaration, and did not agree to the definition of "explicit consensus". It was clear to many that the EC appeared to be backing out of its previous commitment.
The G-21 kept demanding the elimination of agriculture subsidies in rich countries. In a press memo, the Chairman of the US Committee on Finance expressed disappointment with eight G-21 members who were in the process of seeking Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with the US. "This makes me question their interest in pursuing the strong market access commitments required to conclude the FTA with the US", he noted. This was an indirect threat that proponents of G-21 may be deprived the US FTA. There were reports that the EU and USA had tried their best to split the G-21 members, clearly their best efforts were not enough.