Four trading powers can help but not conclude WTO deal: Lamy
Afp, Geneva
World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy said Wednesday that a deal between four key trading powers -- Brazil, the European Union, India and the United States -- might help deadlocked global trade talks but would not determine the outcome. Ministers from the G4 group of WTO members are due to meet in Potsdam, Germany next week to try to breathe new life into the five year-old Doha round of negotiations aimed at breaking down barriers to commerce. "Its a good panel, representative of the negociations," Lamy told journalists here. "It's beneficial to the multilateral process." Lamy said progress in the talks amomg the WTO's 150 members would be more difficult without "convergence" among the four, which represent a broad cross section of conflicting poor and rich country interests. But the WTO director general added: "There is no such thing as a special G4 entry key." Similar meetings in recent months have shown little sign of narrowing differences over agricultural subsidies and tariffs and access to markets for industrial goods and services. Negotiations to conclude a trade liberalisation deal, which is mainly meant to provide an economic boost for developing nations, have missed several deadlines in recent years. The WTO is now hoping to reach an agreement by the end of the year. Under the organisation's rules, it must be approved by consensus and even a single dissenting voice can block it. A draft compromise proposal with detailed figures on tariff and subsidy cuts should be presented to the 150 members by the end of July. "We must be prepared to work in August," Lamy said, signaling that the organisation might cancel its traditional summer holiday break. Earlier report says: Lamy called Tuesday for the United States to show its commitment to global trade negotiations by renewing President George W. Bush's special negotiating authority. The WTO director general, who spoke by teleconference from Geneva, where the WTO is based, exhorted the meeting's participants to promote the renewal by the US Congress of Bush's so-called "fast-track" authority, which expires June 30. He said this was critical to the sputtering Doha round of talks. "Many US trading partners will consider that no movement to renew trade-promotion authority would signal that the US might have lost faith in the round, and this would certainly have an impact on the dynamics of the negotiations," Lamy told a conference in Washington on the Bretton Woods institutions.
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