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The Chairs of the Doha round of negotiations on agriculture and industrial goods, who had hoped to circulate the draft negotiating texts among WTO members by mid-July, have now revised that date making it highly unlikely that the Doha Round will be concluded by the end of the year.
In a joint note to delegations on July 5, 2007, agriculture Chair Ambassador Crawford Falconer and Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) Chair Ambassador Don Stephenson said they would circulate the draft negotiating texts in mid-July, and convene their respective negotiating groups in the week beginning July 23, to hear initial reactions from members. There would then be a break for the traditional August holiday when members could “reflect fully” on the draft texts before negotiations began again on September 3, 2007.
Some commentators take this as the first open acknowledgement that a framework ‘modalities' deal on agriculture and NAMA, with formulae and figures for tariff and subsidy cuts as well as exemptions is not going to be struck by end-July.
It now seems likely that the talks will go into hibernation for at least two years, as two key players -- the US and India -- prepare for general elections and will keep politically sensitive issues on hold.
After the failure of the G4 talks in Potsdam, Germany, on June 21, 2007 (see earlier report ‘G4 Potsdam talks fail' ), the focus returned to WTO headquarters in Geneva and the Chairs' attempts to broker a compromise. In their note, Falconer and Stephenson said that they had since conducted extensive bilateral and plurilateral consultations with members on how to proceed, and would continue doing so.
July 17, 2007
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