Trade ministers and officials from 19 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) attending this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland, on Sunday urged a quick resumption of trade negotiations in a bid to breathe new life to the faltering Cancun talks.  

The trade ministers and government officials as well as leaders of international bodies hoped that the WEF meeting, which was wrapped up Sunday in this Swiss ski resort, will act as a catalystto revive the trade talks that broke down in Cancun, Mexico last year mainly due to differences on farm subsidies.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on rich countries to take the initiative.

"More than anything else, we need a poor-friendly deal on agriculture. No single issue more gravely imperils the multilateral trading system from which you benefit so much," Annan told the annual forum.

"Agricultural subsidies skew market forces. They destroy the environment. And they block poor-country exports from world markets," he said. "For all our sakes, and for the credibility of the system itself, they must be eliminated."

While many felt the urgency to narrow the gap in order to complete a deal, WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi expressed optimism about reaching a deal by the year-end deadline.

"I guess if the political will is there, if people do as they say they are going to do and give instructions to the Geneva people, we should have more than enough time to finish," he said.

The fact that trade ministers failed to achieve this at Cancun does not signify complete failure, he said.

"We still have hope that we can fix it...and get developed and developing countries to work together" on thorny issues like market access and export subsidies, he added.

But Swiss President Joseph Deiss, whose country organized the gathering, warned that it is "simply not possible" to meet the deadline since "the negotiations have not started for the moment. "I think there is too much to be done to get through," he said.

Meanwhile, all agreed that more flexibility was needed to tackle the sticking point.

Carlos Perez del Castillo, the WTO's top negotiator, said efforts should be made, and "if we want...to keep the negotiations on track and to have a ministerial by the end of the year then we will definitely have to see results by the middle of the year."

The trade talks collapsed in September, 2003, at a WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico. The core of the bickering was farm subsidies in rich countries. The failure brought the Doha round to a stalemate.

The Doha round, launched in 2001, is aimed at eliminating trade barriers in an effort to promote global trade.

Although economy heavyweights like the United States and the European Union didn't send their trade ministers and were only represented by trade envoys, the gathering still provides hope.

US ambassador to the WTO Linnet Deily said there was a willingness to engage and some concrete accomplishment could be expected by the end of the year.

Earlier this month, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick made a call in a letter to all 146 WTO members, urging the restarting of talks and said the United States was ready to make a serious effort to facilitate the reopening of talks.

The United States and the EU are two main sponsors of their agricultural products, providing billions of dollars in subsidies to farmers every year.

The World Bank says that successful trade talks, which the WTO hopes to conclude by the end of this year, would give impetus to the recovery of the world economy.

(Xinhua News Agency January 26, 2004)