GENEVA, Sept 4 (AFP): Trading nations yesterday launched a three-week drive to break a long-standing deadlock in key agricultural negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), officials said.
"They are all in a mood to roll their sleeves up and get to work," Crawford Falconer, the chief farm trade negotiator told journalists after the first meeting of the 151 WTO members after a summer break.
WTO chief Pascal Lamy warned two weeks ago that time was running short in the deadlocked six-year-old Doha round of talks on reducing barriers to global commerce.
The trading nations have spent the past month mulling over compromise proposals on farm subsidies and import tariffs, a key stumbling block in the talks which also encompass global trade in industrial goods and services.
Falconer, who is also New Zealand's ambassador to the WTO, warned that the talks would be "in trouble" if member states did not make an effort to overcome their differences this month.
The negotiations scheduled until September 21 are expected to involve a combination of bilateral meetings, gatherings of a group of about 30 countries representing a cross section of WTO members, and plenary sessions of al 151 trading nations, officials said.
Parallel negotiations on industrial goods are also due to take place in Geneva this month. The Doha development round of trade liberalisation talks, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, is aimed at cutting subsidies and import duties primarily to help developing nations to take advantage of expanding global trade.
WTO members are at odds over the extent of new cuts in barriers to trade in agriculture, industrial goods and services amid cross-cutting disagreements between rich and poor countries over the concessions they need to make.
The fresh WTO proposals have so far met with a lukewarm reaction that echoes past disagreements which have repeatedly brought the Doha round close to collapse.
Industrialised powers like the United States and the European Union signalled in July that they were unhappy with the extent of cuts in subsidies to farmers and in agricultural import duties they might face.
Meanwhile, emerging and developing nations like Brazil, India and Indonesia complained about the concessions they would have to make in lifting barriers to imports of industrial goods, even though the United States said the new proposals did not go far enough.
Industrialised economies have been seeking easier access to industrial markets in developing countries in exchange for cuts in their own agricultural protection.
A first sign of the overall state of play is expected at a meeting of the WTO's 151 members in Geneva on September 14.
WTO members launch three-week push in crucial farm talks
FE Team | Published: September 05, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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