THE issue of whether or not to scrap subsidies by offered rich nations to their farmers and corporations including a conclusive position on globalisation remained unresolved even after a marathon closed door meeting that ended at 03:00 hours yesterday.

But United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) associate administrator Zephirin Diabre said it was unfair for rich countries to impose strict guidelines for global liberalisation when they did exactly the opposite.

The meeting by committee of government experts finalising the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation in the field of trade, financing and globalisation which started earlier on Tuesday dragged on until 03:00 hours without resolving any of the key issues holding up the conclusion of the document expected to be endorsed by world leaders next week. Chairperson for the negotiations representing the Atlantic, Caribbean, African and Pacific states, Ambassador Ash from Antigua said while a lot of progress had been made there were still some unresolved issues.

"The issue of subsidies has not yet been resolved and remains a sticky issue. It may be a possible candidate among issues that we may have to present for discussion at a higher (ministerial) level," Ambassador Ash said. "The other issue is the definition of globalisation.

Do we say it is all positive or acknowledge the negative attributes being suffered by some countries." However, he disclosed that among the other clauses agreed on were matters of financing - including Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) appropriate reforms to play the rules of global liberalisation of the economy when some other countries are in certain ways taking steps that just contradict the whole process," Diabre said.

"Secondly, how do you expect poor countries to assume the level of growth that is needed to combat poverty if you start hampering the efforts in that area."

He was commenting on complaints of unfair trade practices being used by the industrialised countries that have been detrimental to the African and other developing nations.

However, Diabre observed that the UN was happy that this matter had been acknowledged by all key players in the global economy as an important matter that needed to be urgently addressed at the WSSD summit. Diabre observed that there was lack of capacity in the area of trade regarding equal market access with the notable failure by the African countries to access the markets of the North.

He cited the granting of subsidies by the rich nations to their farmers as another pressing hiccup that was hampering the ability of African countries to be able to compete. Diabre named the cotton sector as an example where most countries had been voicing their concerns about the manner in which the North was unfairly handling trade and market access.

"Because of the way the US is subsidising the cotton industry in its own country it is creating a lot of problems for the Africa countries to sell their cotton which in most cases is the sole export product of the countries," he said. Diabre named among the affected countries Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and CoteDevoire as losing ground in the US market due to the subsidies.

"While the issue of trade and access to markets was one of the key issues by last night, the matter had not been concluded," he said, adding that a lot of other negotiations were still going on.

South Africa's foreign affairs minister Nkosazana Zuma on Sunday stated that 25 per cent of the Johannesburg summit implementation document which would be endorsed by the world leaders as they meet from next week was yet to be agreed on.

Commenting on the WSSD, Diabre said the UN viewed the summit as a sequence of events that started two years ago at the millennium summit in New York where world leaders agreed on the road to prosperity with key attributes such as halving poverty by the year 2015.

He said this was followed by the Doha meeting of the World Trade Organisation where some progress was made over issues of trade culminating into the Monterey summit in Mexico, where for the first time the rich and poor countries agreed on a pact.

"Under the famous Monterey Consensus it was agreed that there would be an increase in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) accompanied by key reforms on governance on the poor countries' part," Diabre said.

"Now that the Monterey Consensus has provided the financial means and political will, we see the WSSD as the implementing summit. We believe that people have to come out of this summit with clear concrete plans of action on the way to move forward."

He said UNDP had identified certain measures that were essential to achieve progress in sustainable development.

"First, we are of the opinion that whatever the outcome of this summit there should be a reaffirmation of the strong link of this summit and the millennium summit," he said.

Diabre said in this regard UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had proposed a set of initiatives that would open the way to strong partnership and touch on five areas of strong interest to the African continent which includes water, energy, agriculture, health and biodiversity.

"These are issues that one cannot avoid when you are talking about the challenges facing Africa," said Diabre. And WSSD summit spokesperson Sue Markham said by yesterday 109 heads of states and 190 countries had confirmed participation in the global gathering.

The last Earth summit held in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro saw the participation of 107 heads of states. "This has been the biggest turnout ever for a UN conference," said Markham. Chad was the latest inclusion to the list of confirmed government delegations yesterday.

The only countries that have not turned up for the WSSD are Nauru, St. Vincent including San Marino and Turkmenistan. The large turnout of delegates and the anticipated further inflows as the heads of state meetings kick off next week has however created some problems with the local fire authorities here who have indicated that the capacity of the convention centre is only 7,000.

"We hope we don't reach that point at a single moment," said Markham.