Business | Economy
Trade powers to push for Doha deal in July
Trade powers will meet next month for a long-awaited attempt at a breakthrough in global trade talks which risk years of further delay if a deal cannot be hammered out soon.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:03 June 26, 2008
Geneva: Trade powers will meet next month for a long-awaited attempt at a breakthrough in global trade talks which risk years of further delay if a deal cannot be hammered out soon.
World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy called yesterday for a group of ministers to meet, probably for several days, from July 21 to push the Doha round of global free trade talks toward conclusion, diplomats said.
"It will be the 21st," Mexico's ambassador to the WTO, Fernando de Mateo y Venturini, told journalists after a briefing by Lamy to ambassadors at the WTO's Geneva headquarters.
The proposed meeting would include about 30 or 40 ministers. They would represent a range of interests in the fractious negotiations about opening up agriculture, industry and services markets which Lamy is aiming to wrap up in 2008.
If those ministers can successfully broker trade-offs in the most difficult areas of the talks, now in their seventh year, diplomats said the basis of a Doha accord could go to the WTO's full membership for consideration as early as the end of July.
"I think it is perfectly imaginable that this deal can be done, but a lot of hard work needs to be done first," said the European Union's top civil servant for trade David O'Sullivan.
"I agree with him," added US ambassador to the WTO Peter Allgeier, who also participated in Lamy's briefing.
A spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told reporters in Brussels that it was now up to others to come to the table with new concessions. "The European Union has shown leadership. We have been forward in showing flexibility and we will maintain our offers. But it is really now down to others to show similar flexibility," Mandelson's spokesman, Peter Power, said.
The dates of the proposed July meeting of ministers need to be presented to the WTO's 152-member states before they are set.
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