The next ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to be held in Seattle next month should focus on removing injustices in the organization, a trade relations expert said on Tuesday.

International South Group Network director Yash Tandon made these remarks when addressing delegates of a two-day ministerial meeting in Harare.

"It would be grossly unfair to push developing countries to yet another round of trade negotiations with an agenda of new issues such as the environment, competition policy, government procurement, industrial tariffs and labor standards when the old issues are becoming a festering sore," he said.

He said such an attempt would put an unsustainable pressure on the developing countries, worsen their already bad situation and induce loss of faith in the system.

The WTO, he said, would face a serious credibility problem and its role in helping integrate the developing countries into the global economy would be seriously impaired.

"A round with new issues would be unfair to the poor countries and a danger to the credibility of the WTO because the developing countries are already heavily burdened under the Uruguay Round Agreements, many of which they cannot fulfil," he said.

For several decades, the industrialized countries have excluded agriculture and textiles from the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) system to protect their own producers, Tandon said.

This, he said, was one of the major reasons behind the lack of sufficient growth in many developing countries.

The official said the West is trying to impose its own standards and regulations regarding product quality, sanitation, origin, labor and organic products on the developing countries.

"These do not take into account the differential levels of development between countries of the South and those of the North. These non-tariff barriers are now a more formidable barrier of trade than tariff barriers, and they effectively block further industrialization and diversification of the economies of the South," he said.