WTO warns of impending failure in global trade talks
Afp, Geneva
World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy said Friday that trade talks were courting a total failure that would erode a 60-year effort to prop up global economic growth with free and fair trade. He repeated a warning about the potential "fatal" impact of impending US legislation on the stalled talks, in an article for the Wall Street Journal. "We have only a few months to rescue these negotiations," Lamy wrote, urging the WTO's most influential members to "go the extra mile". "There comes a time in every negotiation where failure looms. For the Doha round of global trade negotiations that times has nearly arrived," he said. "Like a progressive malady, a failure in the global trade talks will erode the multilateral trading system that has underpinned the global economy for nearly 60 years," the WTO's Director General said. In July, Lamy suspended the talks launched in the Qatari capital Doha in 2001 due to ongoing deadlock over the bid by the 149-nation WTO to expand organised free trade by reducing subsidies, tariffs and other barriers to commerce. Key trading powers, including the United States, the European Union, major developing countries Brazil and India, and agricultural exporting nations are largely at loggerheads about opening up farming markets. Lamy warned last week that the US Congress's decision on the 2002 Farm Bill and its "extremely generous subsidies", which are due to expire next spring, would have a "decisive" impact on the Doha talks. He also highlighted the expiry of US presidential "fast track" authority on trade issues next summer.
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