Business

Editor: Bruce Meng
16 Sep 2008 01:49:15 GMT

GENEVA, Sept 12 - Negotiations to revive the Doha
Round must restart “very quickly” for a global trade deal to be
salvaged after July’s failed ministerial meeting, mediators of
the seven-year-old talks said on Friday.

“I have the sense that politically there is a readiness to
have another go,” New Zealand ambassador Crawford Falconer told
lawmakers at an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Geneva.

Falconer, who chairs the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
negotiations on agriculture, said the seven economies whose
ministers sparred in July over an emergency tool for farmers had
worked hard this week to resolve that dispute.

If those seven — the United States, European Union, Brazil,
India, Japan, China, and Australia — are able in meetings next
week to narrow their gaps, Falconer said Doha Round talks
involving the WTO’s 153 members could then resume.

“In my view, that process needs to happen very quickly,” the
farm chairman said. “The longer you are away from an implicit
deal, the more difficulties you have putting Humpty Dumpty back
together again.”

Economists believe a deal in the Doha Round could inject
billions of dollars into the global economy, potentially
creating jobs and raising incomes in the developing world.

But many countries are reluctant to expose their key markets
to more competition, and the talks have missed deadline after
deadline since they began in Qatar in 2001.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy convened the July summit in
order to clinch a basic deal spanning farming and manufactured
goods, with the intention of wrapping up Doha negotiations on
cross-border services and other trade rules by the end of 2008.

The July talks became ensnared on the question of when and
how countries could invoke a “special safeguard measure” to
protect poor farmers when import volumes spike or prices fall.

Other issues, including cuts to the huge subsidies paid to
U.S. cotton farmers, were not addressed in the talks, which
collapsed after nine days.

FRESH OFFERS

Mexico’s WTO ambassador Fernando de Mateo y Venturini told
the Inter-Parliamentary Union session that he expected fresh
offers soon in the Doha services talks he mediates.

“Next year we should be able to conclude this Round,” said
de Mateo, whose name has circulated as a potential new chairman
of the WTO’s industrial goods talks following Canadian
ambassador Don Stephenson’s return to Ottawa this summer.

WTO chief Lamy said this week that a core deal in farming
and manufacturing could be completed by the end of this year,
with a full deal formalised in 2009.

But many diplomats have voiced concerns about ramping up
negotiations before a new U.S. administration takes office in
January, given Washington’s stance may change as a result.
Elections expected next year in India and the installation of a
new European Commission at the end of 2009 also loom large.

Still, Falconer said it was critically important to complete
the Doha Round as soon as possible, both to reinforce the world
economy and to clear the decks for another overhaul of world
trade rules in light of climate change and other pressures.

“The multilateral system as it relates to trade needs to
tackle an agenda that is broader,” he said. “Your chances of
tackling a broader agenda are less likely if you are stlil
trying to deal with the inherited agenda from Doha.”