WTO Chief Aims to Restart Trade Talks

(CBC News)

The World Trade Organization can revive its defunct Doha round of negotiations as long as major countries can see eye to eye on a crucial agricultural issue, the group’s director-general, Pascal Lamy, said Thursday.

“My sense today is that there is scope for renewed engagement over the coming weeks, as confirmed by the technical discussions that have been held here in Geneva these past two days,” Lamy said at a speech in Geneva, according to the Reuters news agency.

Lamy has been on a globe-trotting tour since a series of world trade talks, begun seven years ago in Doha, Qatar, collapsed in July. The WTO chief has been pressing for compromise, principally between major players India and the United States.

The talks among the WTO’s 158 members were aiming to reduce and eliminate duties on trade in agricultural and industrial goods and services, and to establish international rules for intellectual property.

But before they were willing to lower trade tariffs, India and a majority of developing countries wanted protections for their farmers so they wouldn’t be battered by volatile global commodity prices. India, which has hundreds of millions of poor farmers, sought to be able to raise protective tariffs if food imports suddenly surged 15% or if global prices collapsed. The United States was adamant that special duties should only be allowed if a country’s agricultural market faces a 40% jump in imports.

Other outstanding issues simmered below the surface, including the sometimes lavish subsidies many developed countries hand out to their farmers – subsidies that are seen to undermine the competitiveness of agricultural producers in poor countries.

But if member states can compromise on the issue of the special protective duties, then the Doha round can move forward to discuss the few remaining items on its agenda, Lamy said Thursday.
“If we cannot complete the Doha round by the end of the year, let’s at least aim to complete these modalities that would take us 80 to 90% of the way in 2008 so as to conclude the round in 2009,” he said.

The talks over trade in industrial goods were being moderated by Donald Stephenson, Canada’s ambassador to the WTO, but will need a new chair as he is returning to Ottawa.