A trade deal to help the world’s poorest countries could yet be saved, a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested on Friday, saying the long-paralysed negotiations were gaining fresh momentum.
Blair is attending the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where the fate of the so-called Doha talks to slash trade subsidies has become once again a hot topic as G8 countries assess promises made in 2005 to help Africa.
Blair’s spokesperson said Davos could be instrumental in breathing life back into the talks, stalled by bickering between rich and developing nations about sharing out the cost of dismantling protective commerce barriers.
”People were assuming that this was running into the sand. That’s not right. There is now a renewed momentum,” the spokesperson said.
”There is now a realisation that a deal is there if people have the will to make a deal. And there is a realisation that people are prepared to move on all sides if all sides are prepared to move.”
Blair has discussed the Doha round with United States President George Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, his spokesperson said, and will meet Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva on Friday to look at ways of making progress before heading into a meeting of world trade ministers.
”People have indicated flexibility but you have to turn that indication into reality in terms of the various sectors. What’s important is that people follow through,” the spokesperson said.
The World Trade Organisation’s Doha round, named after the Qatari capital where it was launched in 2001, was suspended last July with the United States, Europe and developing countries led by Brazil at loggerheads over farm trade reform.
Experts say a breakthrough is needed in the next few months if US lawmakers are to renew the Bush administration’s trade negotiating powers, due to expire in July.
Without that, the talks risk years of delay or collapse, jeopardising their aim of boosting the global economy and easing poverty. – Reuters