Japan will begin work on formulating its negotiating position on an issue that is likely to sharply pit industrialized countries against developing economies in the recently launched round of global trade liberalization talks -- the environment.

The process starts rolling at the end of March when the Foreign Ministry will convene a workshop on the issue of trade and the environment in Tokyo to hear opinions from government and private-sector experts, according to ministry sources.

Among the participants in the workshop will be scholars, business people, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and officials from other government ministries. Experts from the United States, Europe and other Asian countries will also be invited.

"The main theme of the study meeting will be how to make promotion of international trade and preservation of the environmental compatible with each other," one ministry source said. "We hope discussions will be made in depth on such specific topics as the relationship of existing rules set out by the World Trade Organization and trade obligations under multilateral environmental agreements.

"Among other topics of discussion will be the propriety of import restrictions being applied to exporting countries that are deemed to be producing goods through environmentally hazardous production processes and methods and the trade-restricting effect of labeling requirements set by national governments for environmental purposes."

The decision to begin formulating a negotiating position comes less than four months after more than 140 members of the World Trade Organization agreed in Doha, Qatar, to launch a new round of WTO-sponsored liberalization negotiations.

WTO members formally kicked off the new round, officially called the Doha Development Agenda, in Geneva, where the global commerce watchdog is located, at the end of January. Earlier this month, the WTO named heads of several negotiating groups, including one on trade and the environment.

In Doha, the 15-nation European Union, backed by environmentalist groups, strongly advocated putting the issue of trade and the environment on the agenda of the new round.

And the EU got its way, despite deep concerns among many developing countries that environmental regulations could limit their access to the world's rich markets.

Many developing countries are increasingly alarmed by what they perceive as a thinly veiled protectionist ploy among industrialized countries to protect domestic industries from foreign competition by imposing unilateral import restrictions under the guise of environmental preservation.

According to experts, there are about 200 multilateral environmental agreements and about 20 of them have provisions that affect trade in one way or another.

Among these multilateral environmental agreements that are likely to be taken up in the WTO negotiations are the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora -- or the Washington Convention, as it is more commonly known -- the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer and the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.

The 1992 Convention on Biodiversity, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on curbing global warming, the 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants are also likely to be taken up.

In the 1990s alone, several cases involving unilateral import restrictions for environmental reasons were brought to the WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

In 1991, the GATT handed down a ruling in favor of Mexico and against the United States in a tuna-dolphin case, in which the U.S. imposed a ban on Mexican-caught tuna. The U.S. claimed that the tuna was caught in a way that resulted in the overhunting of dolphins. But the WTO determined that the U.S. trade action was in violation of international trade rules.

In 1996, the WTO, which succeeded the GATT in early 1995, also delivered a ruling that a U.S. oil import ban against Venezuela under a domestic air pollution-fighting law was in violation of international trade rules.

In 1998, the WTO handed down one more ruling against the U.S., in a dispute with Thailand, Malaysia, India and Pakistan that centered on shrimp and sea turtles. The U.S. had slapped a ban on shrimp imports from the four Asian countries, claiming that shrimp was caught using a method that resulted in the overhunting of sea turtles, which are protected by the 1973 Washington Convention.

The WTO upheld the four Asian countries' complaint that the U.S. shrimp-import ban violated WTO rules.

The U.S. accepted each ruling.

More recently, the WTO determined in 1998 that the European Union's import ban on hormone-fed U.S. beef contravened WTO rules. The EU refused to accept the ruling and the U.S. imposed sanctions.

As these rulings demonstrate, unilateral trade restrictions made in the name of protecting the environment have so far been considered to be incompatible with WTO rules, a trend environmentalists -- and some industrialized governments -- want to see reversed.

Nevertheless, the EU's success in bringing environmental concerns to global trade talks marks the first time in the history of the WTO and its predecessor, the GATT, that the issue has been put on an agenda. But at the moment, it is unclear whether the WTO will become a more environment-friendly organization.

Indeed, a declaration issued at the WTO ministerial meeting in Doha states that negotiations on the issue of trade and the environment will be conducted on such topics as the relationship between existing WTO rules and specific trade obligations under multilateral environmental agreements, but "without prejudging their outcome."