New Delhi: Emboldened by India's tough posturing at the just concluded Geneva parleys on agriculture at World Trade Organisation (WTO), several African countries have asked New Delhi to spearhead the drive to protect the interests of developing nations, mainly on the issue of food security.

Ahead of the WTO mini ministerial at Tokyo later this month, over a dozen African countries including Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Morocco have approached India to take a lead in all future WTO negotiations on agriculture to build a common strategy against flooding of farm items from advanced nations threatening their domestic agriculture.

The fact that India will send for the first time both Commerce And Agriculture Ministers Arun Jaitley and Ajit Singh respectively to the mini ministerial beginning on February 14 shows the seriousness it attaches to the meet, as it would form the basis for the WTO ministerial at Cancun in Mexico in September.

"Following our bold stand and systematic lobbying for the cause of developing countries at Geneva, many African nations want India to take a lead at WTO to safeguard their farm sector," Ajit Singh, who led the indian delegation to Geneva negotiations, said.

Describing the outcome of the Geneva talks as "highly fruitful", he said India would strive for an effective networking with like-minded countries including those from the cairns group for dismantling of farm subsidies in advanced countries and improved market access to third world.

"Apart from African countries, many others are also in agreement with us on the need for special safeguards to protect agriculture in the developing world as also address the concerns of food security," he said.

Singh said there would be "a lot of give and take and hard bargaining" at the three- day Tokyo conference as countries supporting India on some issues may still differ on certain points.

Stating that it is really difficult to build a consensus among 144 member countries, he said though most of them want substantial reduction in domestic support and export subsidies on farm products, differences crop up on the quantum of cut.

Similar problems are faced with regard to tariff and bound rates for different agricultural commodities, which are extremely important for countries like India for preventing unrestricted imports.

"Now many countries in Africa and elsewhere realise that their agriculture has become highly vulnerable to cheap imports and… they want reasonably high level of tariff to check dumping," he said.

Singh said India is of the view that specific rules should also be established to govern export credit, guarantee, loans, insurance and food aid.

Government has also decided that support measures, which distort trade and are not under reduction commitments, should be brought under disciplines of reduction commitments as far as possible. "This will help in containing diversion of support from one box to another," he said.

Negotiations in agriculture at WTO have been going on since January 2000 and Doha ministerial of WTO held in 2001 had set up a framework for negotiations. The modalities of the negotiations have to be agreed upon by the WTO member countries by March 31, 2003.

The target date for the completion of all negotiations including agriculture is January 1, 2005.

PTI