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WTO trade talks deal within grasp but not assured
Trade ministers raced against the clock on Tuesday toward the elusive goal of an agreement to launch talks to tear down barriers to global commerce.
Trade ministers raced against the clock on Tuesday toward the elusive goal of an agreement to launch talks to tear down barriers to global commerce.
Up against a midnight deadline, teams of officials laboured through Monday night into the early hours to try to overcome five sets of obstacles in the way of a deal that businessmen say would be a timely confidence-booster for a flagging world economy.
Spirits were lifted on Monday by a separate accord on how to get cheap drugs to poor countries by waiving patent protection rules without deterring drugs firms in industrialised countries from funding research on new medicines.
But diplomats and officials said it would be wrong to underestimate the political difficulties that need to be cleared up before the remaining issues can be settled.
''Bluntly, there are still too many areas of substantial difference,'' said World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Mike Moore. ''It will be a long 24 hours.'' “Success would be especially sweet for Moore, a former New Zealand Prime Minister, who took charge of the WTO shortly before a December 1999 meeting of the group in Seattle that began with rioting by anti-capitalism protesters and ended in an abject failure to agree the scope of a new round of trade talks.
While cautious about the outcome in Doha, where ministers are meeting under blanket security, Moore and others stress that the remaining differences are much narrower.
Bureau Report
Up against a midnight deadline, teams of officials laboured through Monday night into the early hours to try to overcome five sets of obstacles in the way of a deal that businessmen say would be a timely confidence-booster for a flagging world economy.
Spirits were lifted on Monday by a separate accord on how to get cheap drugs to poor countries by waiving patent protection rules without deterring drugs firms in industrialised countries from funding research on new medicines.
But diplomats and officials said it would be wrong to underestimate the political difficulties that need to be cleared up before the remaining issues can be settled.
''Bluntly, there are still too many areas of substantial difference,'' said World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Mike Moore. ''It will be a long 24 hours.'' “Success would be especially sweet for Moore, a former New Zealand Prime Minister, who took charge of the WTO shortly before a December 1999 meeting of the group in Seattle that began with rioting by anti-capitalism protesters and ended in an abject failure to agree the scope of a new round of trade talks.
While cautious about the outcome in Doha, where ministers are meeting under blanket security, Moore and others stress that the remaining differences are much narrower.
Bureau Report