Washington, DC — In a toughly-worded comment to a luncheon audience Thursday that seemed aimed at the agricultural policies of the United States and Europe, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said there are "powerful members of the WTO (World Trade Organization) who would like to continue crippling our agriculture and subsidizing our famines with aid."

Speaking about the current international trade negotiations that were begun at a November 2001 WTO ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, he also spoke of unnamed governments that "would be happy to see the Doha round stall" over patent rights and access to medicine. "That would not be in Africa's interest at all," he said.

The trade talks are currently stalled, with the United States refusing to accept a mechanism that would give developing nations easier access to medicines and European Union members resisting reform of their agricultural subsidies programs.

While both threaten the success of the next WTO meeting scheduled for Cancún, Mexico in September, Museveni dismissed the patent fight as a "red herring." While the WTO must make provision for poor nations that lack domestic manufacturing capabilities, he called for the protection of patents, saying "they are important incentives for research and development."

"We need, as Africans, to think hard about this, and to ask ourselves: in whose interest are these arguments being made? We have too often in the past been pawns for agendas not our own. We have earned the right to be a little skeptical."

During his four-day working visit to the United States, Museveni has stressed his preference for trade over aid as the best way to fight poverty in nations like Uganda. "Our first priority in negotiations must be to pry open markets that are now closed, by tariffs and subsidies, to our agriculture and value-added manufactures.

Thursday's luncheon for Museveni was sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association.