The director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy, said on Monday that he was recommending an indefinite suspension of the troubled five-year round of global trade talks.
“The only course of action I can recommend is to suspend the negotiations across the round as a whole, to enable a serious reflection by participants, which is clearly necessary,” Lamy told journalists, without setting a date for restarting the talks.
Lamy was speaking after a crucial two-day meeting between six key trading nations, representing a cross-section of interests in the 149-nation body, collapsed earlier on Monday.
“The time can only come when members are ready to play ball …. It is clearly now in their court,” Lamy commented.
The WTO chief emphasised that further formal negotiations on bringing down barriers to trade in agricultural and industrial goods were on hold indefinitely.
“Further trade negotiation committees will only take place if and when this period of suspension ends and on this I don’t know if it will end,” he told journalists.
Earlier, in a speech to a meeting of the heads of delegations to the WTO, Lamy said there was a clear lack of political will for a deal on the Doha Development Round, which was launched in the Qatari capital in 2001.
“If the political will really exists there must be a way, but it is not here today [Monday],” he said.
“And let me be clear: there are no winners and losers in this assembly today, there are only losers,” Lamy added. — AFP