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China blamed "selfish" wealthy Western nations on July 30 for the latest failure to conclude long-running talks to free up global trade, while Asian rival Japan pointed the finger at the region's emerging giants.
China's official news agency, Xinhua, said the negotiations at WTO headquarters in Geneva collapsed ultimately because the US and the EU were unwilling to scrap huge subsidies they pay their farmers.
But Japan upbraided China and India, as growing economic powers, for not shouldering greater responsibilities in the WTO.
Xinhua said the root cause was that rich countries cared too much about their own interests and too little about those of developing nations.
Not only were Washington and Brussels unwilling to face down their farm lobbies, but they put huge pressure on poor countries to slash tariffs on industrial imports and throw open their financial services markets to Western banks and insurers.
"This selfishness and shortsighted behaviour has directly caused the failure of this WTO ministerial meeting, which will have a number of serious consequences," it said.
A failure to revive the talks and clinch a trade deal would raise doubts about the ability of the international community to tackle other complex issues such as climate change and soaring food and energy prices in a global framework, the agency added.
Both India and China now wield more economic influence than they did when the trade talks were launched in Doha, the capital of Qatar, in 2001, Japanese Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said. (Source: Reuters)
July 30, 2008
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