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WTO talks need to resume
soon to build
on existing compromises, the WTO farm mediator has said.
The issue reflected a deep
political
divide, New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, who chairs
negotiations on agriculture, said in a report to WTO's 153 members
on last month's meeting of ministers.
The discussion over the
proposed
"special safeguard mechanism", which would enable developing
countries to raise tariffs to counter a flood in imports, could not
be dismissed as merely a technical issue, Falconer said.
"If we want to fix this in
something
less than a three-year time horizon (which I hope we want to do), it
has to be done in the very near term," Falconer said in the report.
"Each day that passes takes us further and further away from the
preparedness to compromise that was certainly evident in that last
week of July for much of the time."
The appeal received a
restrained
response in Washington, where US trade representative Susan Schwab is
due to meet WTO director-general Pascal Lamy next week to discuss
future moves for the troubled trade talks.
"Ambassador Schwab will...
continue
consulting with other trade ministers who demonstrated their
commitment in Geneva to a successful outcome to the Doha Round,"
USTR spokesman Gretchen Hamel said in a statement.
"The US remains committed
to a
successful Doha Round. However, we continue to have deep concerns
with proposals under consideration that would not only limit market
opening by the world's fastest growing economies, but would
actually raise new barriers to trade - particularly against other
developing countries."
Falconer said the way to
crack the
deadlock was through intensive work by senior officials and he was
willing to organise such negotiations in the coming weeks.
Besides the special
safeguard
mechanism, Falconer warned there were still a number of potential
deal breakers which had to be tackled, such as the level of cotton
subsidies, which ministers did not even get as far as discussing last
month. But he said the state of negotiations last month reflected
inconceivable progress compared with a year earlier, with the basis
for a deal on many of the agriculture issues. (Source: Live Mint)
August 13, 2008
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