EU, US officials to meet on Doha trade talks
31/5/2007 15:46
Top trade and agriculture officials from the European Union and the
United States will meet Friday in a new push to revive the deadlocked world
trade talks, officials said yesterday.
The "bilateral" meeting will be
attended by EU trade and agriculture commissioners, Peter Mandelson and Mariann
Fischer Boel, and their US counterparts, Trade Representative Susan Schwab and
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, a spokesman from the European Commission
said.
The meeting, to be held in Brussels, is basically part of preparatory
work for the ministerial talks next month in London between the EU, the United
States, India and Brazil, the four major trading powers within the World Trade
Organization (WTO), the spokesman added.
The four key players, together with
Japan and Australia, during their ministerial meeting in New Delhi in April, set
the year-end as the deadline for a final deal of WTO Doha-round talks and vowed
to redouble their efforts.
The Doha-round talks, initially launched in 2001
with the aim of alleviating poverty through fairer trade practices, came to a
deadlock in July 2006 due to sharp differences among major WTO members on
agricultural trade and industrial market access.
Xinhua
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