Trade ministers from 24 WTO members said yesterday that they were committed
to bringing the Doha Round talks back on track, although major hurdles involving
agriculture trade and industrial market access remain ahead.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson,
Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and
other ministers met for about three hours in Davos on the sidelines of the World
Economic Forum annual meeting.
During the discussions, the ministers "clearly expressed a renewed commitment
to put the Doha Round back on track and to achieve a broad-based deal," said a
statement issued after the informal gathering.
The ministers also expressed "a strong wish for a quick resumption of full
scale talks in Geneva to strive for a qualitative high level result and hammer
out a deal," said Swiss Economics Minister Doris Leuthard, who chaired the
meeting together with WTO chief Pascal Lamy.
According to the statement, "the clear signal for the resumption of full
scale negotiations in Geneva" also got strong support from political leaders and
the business community gathered in Davos for the annual economic forum.
Speaking to reporters, Lamy said this informal ministerial meeting of
selected WTO members aimed at taking stock of the current state of the Doha
Round and framing next steps.
Substantial issues, particularly the differences on the real numbers of farm
tariff and subsidy cuts, were not touched during the discussions. In other
words, the deadlock that brought about the suspension of the five-year talks
last July was in no way broken.
To break the deadlock, major WTO members need to try "a new approach" that is
different than last July, when so-called last-ditch negotiations among key
players including the United States, the European Union, Brazil and India
collapsed, Lamy said.
But Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, US Trade Representative Susan
Schwab and Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath all expressed a certain degree of
optimism following Saturday's meeting, describing its outcome as a forward step.
Amorim said he got "a positive sense" from the meeting and left it with "a
higher feeling of optimism" that a deal could be achieved.
"I think I also detected a sense of urgency which I don't think was there
before," he told reporters.
Amorim expressed hope that "some sort of breakthrough" should be there in
March or early April, ahead of the expiration of the US government's fast track
authority for signing trade deals.
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab also said that she was optimistic
about the Doha Round trade talks, following the meeting on Saturday.
But she reiterated that any new US offer on farm subsidy cuts was subject to
the EU making concessions on farm tariffs and major developing countries such as
India and Brazil providing more market access opportunities.
India's Nath, for his part, stressed that the Doha Round trade talks must
keep its mandate of development and any final deal should ensure more trade
flows from developing countries to developed countries.
He hoped that the Doha Round would have some breakthrough instead of going
"round and round" once the full process started in Geneva.