In particular, COSATU urges the three countries to do everything possible to prevent a looming disaster for developing countries. This is likely to occur if the wealthy Northern countries continue to insist on forcing the poor Southern countries to open up their markets to multinational monopoly capital while refusing to open up their own manufacturing and agricultural markets.

We agree with Roberto Azevedo, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry’s top trade official, when he said that Washington was threatening the world’s poorer countries with a "take it or leave it" ultimatum and that it was seeking to divert attention from its unwillingness to accept significant cuts in farm subsidies, six years into the talks.

The Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks began with a promise that this would be a "development round" but the course of the negotiations has gone in the diametrically opposite direction, with development being less of the focus and market access for rich nations being the key objective

Instead of addressing existing inequalities, governments, particularly from the European Union and the United States, are paying lip service to a development commitment, while demanding a terrible trade-off with developing countries: increased access to the markets of developed countries for agricultural products in return for significant market liberalisation, particularly in industrial products.

The danger for countries like South Africa, Brazil and India is that they will be de-industrialised, lose a significant part of their manufacturing sector, and become simply a producer of primary products and a destination for tourism, with disastrous consequences for employment. We will simply loose our ability to implement our current Industrial Policy initiative, required to meet the developmental needs of South Africa.

A very high price is being asked for a reduction of the North’s highly subsidised agricultural market. South Africa, for example, will be obliged to open up its own market for agricultural products, with only a small number of special products possibly being exempted from tariff cuts.

A study by the Carnegie Endowment on the winners and losers from Doha estimate that the liberalisation of manufactured goods for unskilled labour will further drive down wages of workers. It will lead to job losses in unskilled jobs in manufacturing in countries such as South Africa, with most significant changes in clothing and textile, metals, motor vehicles, electronics and machinery. And a reduction of 24% in tariffs will lead to losses in labour intensive sectors, including in South Africa.

South Africa will be particularly affected by reductions in tariffs in non-agricultural market access (NAMA). Its present tariff structure is different from that of most other developing countries, which will lead to reductions in applied rates and potential job losses in many sectors. Even the possibility of exempting some tariff lines from reductions will not help South Africa to shield labour-intensive and strategic sectors.

The balance is quite unfavourable for developing countries like South Africa. The losses are going to be substantial and serious, whereas the gains will be minimal and uncertain.

In the face of these momentous challenges it is crucial that countries like South Africa, India and Brazil remain totally united, and resist any pressure to sign bilateral or regional agreements with the USA or EU. We must not allow the rich and powerful to get away with a tactic of divide-and-rule, which will entrench their dominance even further.

As well as tackling these important short-term problems, COSATU urges the three governments to spearhead a campaign, uniting the whole of the developing South, for the transformation and democratisation of all the international institutions, starting with the United Nations and the WTO.

They must be obliged to speak and act in the interests of the majority of the people of the world who live in poverty in the South and break the stranglehold of the powerful nations and multinational business interests of the North, which still dominate these institutions.