After a six-month-stalemate on agricultural issues all 150
members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed on Wednesday
to fully resume the Doha Round of global trade talks.
The development came at an informal meeting of WTO ambassadors
in Geneva and it followed a mini-ministerial meeting in the Swiss
resort of Davos four days ago that gave new impetus to the stalled
talks.
All ambassadors at Wednesday's meeting indicated that they
backed a full-scale resumption of the talks and would try to reach
a deal in the next few months, WTO sources said.
"The political conditions are more favorable for the conclusion
of the Round than they have been for a long time," WTO
Director-General, Pascal Lamy, told the meeting in a speech. He
added negotiators should restart work, "With full convictions that
this deal is do-able."
The Doha Round was launched in 2001 with the aim of alleviating
poverty through fairer trade conditions. But the negotiations
stalled due to sharp differences among major WTO members on
agriculture trade and industrial market access.
Lamy had to suspend the talks last July after negotiations among
six major players - the US, EU, Australia, Japan, India and Brazil
- collapsed in Geneva.
After six months of quiet informal consultations, mainly in
bilateral form, some 30 WTO trade ministers gathered in Davos on
Saturday to discuss the possibility of breaking the Doha deadlock.
But major differences still remain although ministers pledged to
quickly resume the talks in Geneva.
Lamy has said that to break the deadlock the US needs to offer
more on cutting domestic farm subsidies, the EU offer further
reduction in agriculture tariffs and major developing nations such
as Brazil and India allow more market access for service and
industrial products.
WTO members now have only a few months to reach a breakthrough
as the US government's special authority for negotiating trade
deals expires at the end of June.
US Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, has indicated that the
Congress would not renew that authority unless WTO members made
substantial progress in the Doha Round.
(Xinhua News Agency February 1, 2007)
