Western countries should kickstart deadlocked global trade talks to heal the international diplomatic rifts left by the war in Iraq, Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), urged this week.
Amid mounting concern that tensions between Europe and the United States over Iraq could spill into the economic sphere, Supachai said pushing on with the trade round launched 18 months ago was the best way of repairing damage inflicted on the United Nations and other international organisations.
Worries about the lack of progress on the new round are expected to dominate the annual meeting of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based rich countries club, which began this week.
Speaking on the sidelines of that meeting, Supachai said the WTO was one of the few multilateral institutions that had not been damaged by the fallout from the war in Iraq.
While the WTO’s most powerful members all agree that the talks are in trouble, trade experts say there are few signs of movement on the divisive issues. Chief among these are a reduction in European and US farm subsidies, which act as a barrier to Third World imports, and changes to global patent rules to allow poor countries to import cheap drugs.
Experts fear the WTO’s ministerial meeting in Cancun next September could turn into a repeat of the disastrous Seattle summit. —
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