WTO chief in China seeking breakthrough in Doha trade talks

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BEIJING, June 18 (PTI): With the Doha round entering a "crunch" phase amid hectic efforts by the US, EU, India and Brazil to revive the trade talks, the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Pascal Lamy is here to hold high-level consultations with China, especially on agriculture.
Lamy has said that he would tell Chinese officials that developing countries should also contribute to the trade talks so they can be concluded in the next six to nine months.
"Obviously, all countries are preparing for a possible compromise ... and I want to make sure that as we reach this crunch time, China can preserve its defences and offences in the negotiations," Lamy, who arrived here Sunday, said.
Next week, representatives of the United States, the European Union, India and Brazil will meet in Germany to discuss possible compromise solutions to the Doha talks in what many see as the last chance for the round.
The Doha round of trade talks was launched in 2001 with the goal of boosting the global economy and helping poor countries through fairer trade conditions. The talks have stalled mainly because of sharp differences over agriculture subsidies and tariffs.
Lamy said the talks need to be finished by the end of the year or early next year, and to do that WTO members must first reach an interim agreement on cutting agriculture subsidies, agriculture tariffs and industrial tariffs in the next few weeks.
China, which joined the WTO in 2001, has stressed that specific concerns of new WTO members should be effectively addressed at the trade talks.
Soon after consultations with Commerce Minister Kamal Nath here to review the progress of Doha Development Agenda last month, Chinese Commerce Minister Bo and Agriculture Minister Sun had jointly written to senior WTO officials urging the developed nations to offer more concessions to revive the stalled talks and explaining Beijing's key positions on agriculture trade talks.
"Effective cuts in trade-distorting domestic farm support by developed members must be achieved in real terms," the letter, addressed to Lamy, General Council Chairman, Ambassador Muhamad Noor Yacob and Chairman of the Special Session of the Committee on Agriculture, Ambassador Crawford Falconer respectively, said.
Agriculture trade talks are a key part of the WTO's wider Doha round multilateral trade negotiations, which have gone through five years but still inconclusive.
The WTO's developed members, particularly the US and European Union, have been under pressure to offer further cuts in domestic farm support to move the talks forward.
"For many years, due to the huge amount of trade-distorting domestic support provided by the developed members, the world price for agricultural products has been artificially depressed, adversely affecting the livelihood of the farmers in the developing countries," Bo and Sun said.
The letter said that the livelihood 740 million rural population of China has been seriously affected by the import of products with huge amount of trade-distorting domestic support by developed members, particularly those which are heavily subsidised such as wheat, cotton, and soybeans.
During the meeting here last month, both Nath and Bo reaffirmed their support for an 'open, fair, equitable, transparent and rule-based multilateral trading system'.
The two ministers also stressed that specific concerns of recently acceded members (RAMs) should be effectively addressed in the next paper.