Doha Round talks need quick restart

Geneva: Negotiations to revive the Doha Round must restart "very quickly" for a global trade deal to be salvaged from July's failed ministerial meeting, mediators of the seven-year-old talks said on Friday.

"I have the sense that politically there is a readiness to have another go," New Zealand ambassador Crawford Falconer told lawmakers at an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Geneva.

Falconer, who chairs the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations on agriculture, said the seven economies whose ministers sparred in July over an emergency tool for farmers had worked hard last week to resolve that dispute.

If those seven - the US, European Union, Brazil, India, Japan, China, and Australia - are able in meetings this week to narrow their gaps, Falconer said Doha Round talks involving the WTO's 153 members could resume apace.

"In my view, that process needs to happen very quickly," the farm chairman said. "The longer you are away from an implicit deal, the more difficulties you have putting Humpty Dumpty back together again."

Economists believe a deal in the Doha Round could inject billions of dollars into the global economy, potentially creating jobs and raising incomes in the developing world.

Missed deadlines

But the WTO talks have missed deadline after deadline since they began in Qatar's capital in 2001, mainly because many countries have been reluctant to expose their key producers to more competition under the intended accord.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy convened the July summit to seek a basic deal spanning farming and manufactured goods, with the intention of wrapping up talks on services and other trade rules by the end of 2008.

The July talks became ensnared on the question of when and how countries could invoke a "special safeguard measure" to protect poor farmers when import volumes spike or prices fall.

Cuts to cotton subsidies, a politically sensitive issue in the United States and Africa, were not addressed in the talks, which collapsed after nine days.

But Falconer said many important questions - including the treatment of some sensitive products and industries under a commerce-boosting deal - had basically been agreed. "There was an implicit political resolution on all those issues," he said.

The New Zealander said he planned to call a meeting by the end of the month to assess where WTO members now stand on farm issues, regardless of whether the "group of seven" make a breakthrough in their session this week.

Mexico's WTO ambassador Fernando de Mateo y Venturini told the Inter-Parliamentary Union session that he expected fresh offers soon in the Doha Round services talks he mediates.