The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) weekly newsletter Bridges has a report on the end of the third round of the WTO Director-General selection process (Vol 9, #17, May 18).
The story isn't posted to the ICTSD web site yet. Here is a selection from the email version of the newsletter. (The Subscription to this very helpful weekly newsletter on trade issues is free: "Bridges Weekly Trade Digest").
Lamy apparently had overwhelming support - in numbers, geographic representation, and among countries at different levels of development - in this third round:
...Lamy was the favourite of almost four-fifths of the WTO's 148 Member delegations, attracting support from not only the EU's 25 constituent Members, but also from many African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) country Members, several of which receive trade preferences from the EU. The latter group had initially backed the candidacy of Mauritian Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Jaya Krishna Cuttaree, who withdrew from the DG race in April (see BRIDGES Weekly, 4 May 2005, http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/05-05-04/story3.htm). Some prominent developing country Members including India, South Africa, and Thailand also chose Lamy over the representative from their G-20 counterpart, Uruguay...
...Costa Rica was the only country to express qualms at the 13 May meeting. The head of the country's delegation said that some Members had reservations about Lamy's candidacy, and that these dissenting views had not been reflected in Mohamed's statement. Sources report that these countries are primarily Latin American banana producers that had opposed Lamy's efforts to replace the EU's banana import quotas with what they saw as an overly high specific 'per tonne' tariff. Nonetheless, facing pressure from other Members to join the consensus, Costa Rica said that it would not veto his appointment.
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