World Trade Organisation (WTO) nations on Thursday endorsed suspension of free-trade negotiations after they collapsed on Monday, diplomats and trade officials said.
Several countries attacked the so-called Group of Six of leading trading powers for refusing concessions to open the way for a treaty and said that progress made so far must be kept alive for a resumption of the Doha Round.
The ruling general council of the 149-nation WTO ”took note” of a report by director general Pascal Lamy, in which he reaffirmed his recommendation, made on Monday, to freeze the faltering negotiations, the sources said.
Lamy’s decision to suspend the talks followed the acrimonious collapse of a meeting of six leading trading powers, which sent the WTO’s five-year search for a multilateral free-trade deal toppling towards total failure.
A string of delegates who spoke at Thursday’s session said they regretted that heavyweight WTO members Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States had been unable to come up with a crucial compromise.
Cambodia proposed that the freeze should last only until the next general council session in October, but Norwegian trade ambassador Eirik Glenne, the chairperson of the ruling body, said that there was no point fixing yet another deadline given the state of play.
WTO members have a history of failing to meet their target dates because of persistent differences.
Several senior delegates said they hoped that what had emerged from the negotiations so far would not be lost.
New Zealand ambassador Crawford Falconer, who has been steering attempts to reach a farm-trade deal, said that nations should ”remain conscious of the progress” made over the past two years.
The Doha Round kicked off in the Qatari capital in 2001, with the goal of reducing subsidies, customs duties and other trade barriers, and using commerce to give developing countries a boost.
There was little real movement until 2004 and 2005, when key trading nations began coming forward with proposals — even though many of these were seen as offering too little and asking too much.
”I would, above all, urge members not to retreat from where we had got up to to that point at least,” Falconer told the session.
On Monday, Lamy had won an informal green light for the freeze at a meeting of ambassadors representing the 149 WTO nations.
Under WTO rules, however, the ambassadors were required to reconvene for an official general council session.
Senior negotiators have warned that it is impossible to say when negotiations can restart. The Doha Round was meant to yield a trade treaty by the end of 2004, but the target was later shifted to December 2006.
Analysts forecast that a thaw may not be possible until 2009 because of domestic political concerns, notably the electoral calendar in the US.
They have warned that trading nations may, meanwhile, shift their focus to negotiating more bilateral and regional deals, creating a complex web of conflicting interests in global commerce.
The WTO talks came unstuck because of three major issues: domestic farm subsidies provided by the US, import tariffs on agricultural goods levied by the EU and market access in developing countries for industrial goods and services. — Sapa-AFP