Talks to rescue a world trade deal will continue on Tuesday with players trying to avert a collapse over measures intended to help poor countries.
The United States exchanged harsh words with China and India as key World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks dragged into a second week on Monday.
Poorer countries are divided over plans for a new trade deal, with developing country importers pitted against exporters pushing for liberalisation.
Ministers hailed an emerging trade deal on Friday, as compromise proposals revitalised deadlocked talks at the World Trade Organisation.
World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy says that only "modest" progress has been made in the past two days of crucial trade talks.
Ministers from 35 key nations began a critical round of talks on Monday in an attempt to nail down a global trade deal.
Ministers from more than 30 countries, deeply divided and clinging to core interests, mount another bid on Monday to nail down a global trade accord.
The United Nations urged a summit on the global food crisis on Tuesday to help stop the spread of starvation threatening nearly one billion people by lowering trade barriers and removing export bans. ”Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders.
World leaders are to meet next week for urgent talks aimed at preventing tens of millions of the world’s poor dying of hunger as a result of soaring food prices. The summit in Rome is expected to pledge immediate aid to poor countries threatened by malnutrition as well as charting longer-term strategies for improving food production.
A World Trade Organisation (WTO) mediator issued new proposals on Monday for opening up services such as telecoms and banking as part of a global trade deal. But the new text, replacing a previous document issued in February, did not set dates for revised offers or final commitments in the services negotiations.
The World Health Organisation’s 193 member states on Saturday overcame their deep divisions over intellectual property rules and endorsed a strategy to help improve developing-country access to drugs and medical tests.
It is still possible to reach a deal on long-delayed world trade negotiations before the end of the year, the head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said in an interview published on Tuesday. ”There are the political and technical conditions to wrap things up in 2008,” the WTO’s Pascal Lamy told the Les Echos newspaper.
Many Africans are getting substandard malaria drugs, with more than a third of the pills tested failing quality tests. Tests of 195 different packs of malaria drugs sold in six African cities showed 35% of them either did not contain high enough levels of active ingredient or did not dissolve properly.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged urgent action on Tuesday to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is hurting developing countries. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home, warning that could only make the problem worse.
European biodiesel producers said they were asking Brussels on Friday to impose punitive import duties on United States biodiesel but their US rivals said they would hit back with a complaint of their own. The trade in biofuels has surged due to growing demand for alternatives to fossil fuels as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Parliamentarians cannot remain silent about Zimbabwe, a case of ”democracy gone wrong”, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete said in Cape Town on Sunday at the opening of the 118th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting. In his speech, President Thabo Mbeki congratulated the IPU for its stance on gender equality in government.
The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave a gloomy report on Saturday on prospects for the world economy to a dozen leaders debating how to respond to global financial turmoil. Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a high-powered forum that most of the downside risks to the world economy feared six months ago had now become reality.
The highest and oldest wall is that which separates ”us” from ”them”. This is described today as a great divide of religions or ”a clash of civilisations”, which are false concepts, propagated to provide ”the other” — a target for fear and hatred that justifies invasion and plunder, writes John Pilger.
South Africa will continue engaging with the European Union to ensure new trade agreements with African countries do not harm regional integration, President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday. Africa’s biggest economy has criticised the economic partnership agreements (EPA) designed to open up trade.
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/ 22 January 2008
Reducing software piracy over the next four years in South Africa could create a stronger local IT sector, generate new high-paying jobs and contribute to the country’s economy, according to a new study released on Tuesday by the Business Software Alliance.
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/ 13 January 2008
The unimaginable has happened, to the displeasure of arrogant Europe. Africa, thought to be so poor that it would agree to anything, has said no in rebellious pride. No to the straitjacket of the economic partnership agreements (EPAs), no to the complete liberalisation of trade, no to the latest manifestations of the colonial pact.
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/ 9 December 2007
Most African leaders on Sunday rejected new trade deals demanded by the European Union, dealing a blow to efforts to forge a new economic partnership at the first European Union (EU)-Africa summit in seven years. The EU wants to replace expiring trade accords with so-called Economic Partnership Agreements or temporary deals.
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/ 9 December 2007
German Chancellor Angela Merkel directly confronted Robert Mugabe over human rights abuses in front of European and African leaders in Portugal on Saturday, putting the Zimbabwean leader under the spotlight at a summit that has been overshadowed by the despot’s presence.
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/ 7 December 2007
Kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers, eurocrats and countless diplomats from 80 countries will mingle on Friday evening at a sprawling exhibition centre in the east of Lisbon, at the biggest gathering of European and African leaders ever staged.
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/ 7 December 2007
Zimbabwe and three other African nations provisionally agreed on a regional free trade deal with the European Union (EU) on Thursday. The deal is part of EU efforts to meet a December 31 deadline set by the World Trade Organisation for replacing its trading system with former European colonies.
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/ 5 December 2007
South Africa said on Wednesday it would not sign a new trade pact with the European Union until its concerns over possible "detrimental impacts" new accords could have on Africa had been addressed. "South Africa is very much opposed to the inclusion of certain trade and services clauses," Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General Gert Grobler told journalists.
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/ 16 November 2007
A new World Trade Organisation (WTO) accord could improve access to clean-energy tools in poorer countries, but any deal making it easier to ship cargo internationally would also carry a heavy carbon footprint. Environmental economists are uncertain about the relative merits of the WTO’s Doha round.
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/ 6 November 2007
Europe’s trade chief accused Nigeria and South Africa on Monday of trying to block negotiations for new trade and investment deals between the European Union and scores of former colonies. The EU wants to sign new Economic Partnership Agreements with nearly 80 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries before December 31.
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/ 23 October 2007
Talks on a deal to free up world trade are making progress, developing country leaders said on Monday, but the chairperson of key industry negotiations said more needed to be done to reach an agreement. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the Doha round of trade could end in a deal by the end of the year.
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/ 18 October 2007
The European Union has given a cautious welcome to the outcome of a summit of three big developing countries. The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa on Wednesday reaffirmed their commitment to seeking a deal in the long-delayed World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha round of global free-trade talks that was ”fair and acceptable to all”.
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/ 17 October 2007
Vietnam’s Communist Party plans to switch its 20 000 desktop computers nationwide to open-source software next year, avoiding problems with copyright infringement, state media said on Friday. In Vietnam, an industry group has estimated more than 90% of all software is counterfeit.
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/ 17 October 2007
The struggling global trade negotiations are looming large over a South Africa-India-Brazil summit this week, after the United States said the developing countries were putting the talks in peril by refusing to open up their manufacturing markets. The three countries came together around 2000 to strengthen ties between developing countries.