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In his first press conference as Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown said he was “going to work very hard” to try to resolve the Doha round of global trade talks.
Brown said there was enough “common ground” between the major players, and the gaps between them were not “unbridgeable”.
“I am going to work very hard to ensure there is a world trade agreement this year. I believe, from talking to all the people concerned, that there is common ground between all the major negotiators -- the European Union, America, India and Brazil -- and that agreement is possible.”
However, Brown reiterated the same old prescription for reaching a deal: the US must cut subsidies, the EU lower tariffs, and Brazil must change its protectionist position over the manufacturing sector. He warned that if a deal was not struck by the end of the year, it could result in an increase in protectionist policies.
The stalemate in WTO talks, primarily over cuts in farm subsidies by the US and lowering of tariffs on non-agriculture imports by developing countries, was not improved by suggestions put forward by the WTO's chief negotiators last week (see earlier report ‘ WTO circulates revised blueprints of agriculture, NAMA texts' ).
French Foreign Trade Minister Herve Novelli said those proposals were not enough to lead to any agreement. “It does not add up. We are quite concerned and quite worried about the proposals offered in the talks,” he told a news conference.
Novelli said that while the proposals allow discussions to continue, “they are a very long way off (from what they should be) to be able to reach a deal”.
July 24, 2007
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