The Doha Round talks suffered a setback this week, when the trade ministers of member nations failed to reach an agreement on a moderately ambitious deal for the Hong Kong meetings: Blame game starts as global trade talks fail to bring vital breakthrough (Frances Williams, Financial Times, November 10).
The Hong Kong meetings will still go forward, and the next step is to put together a draft text for that meeting. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy will try and produce this by the end of the month. Williams reports:
Pascal Lamy, WTO director general, is now aiming to produce by the end of this month a draft text for ministers to approve in Hong Kong. This would include a timetable for agreeing a blueprint for the round early next year that negotiators will use to draw up detailed schedules for market opening in agriculture, industrial goods and services.
But even this "recalibrated" approach could fail without rapid movement to narrow deep divisions between WTO members in almost all areas of the talks.
Mr Mandelson, who is under strong pressure from France and its allies not to give more ground in agriculture, insisted yesterday that it was up to countries such as Brazil and India to show their hands on industrial goods and services as an "incentive" for Brussels to go further.
But Celso Amorim, Brazil's foreign minister, said the EU's demands were totally unacceptable to developing countries. And while Brazil had this week indicated its willingness to cut industrial tariffs, its signals had fallen upon deaf ears.
I'm on personal and business travel this week, and have a hard time keeping up with the negotiations.
However, the New Economist covers the ground with a useful summary of news reports and blog posts: WTO talks fail - where now for Doha?.
For surveys of media coverage, I'd also recommend the free, daily summaries of agriculture news available from Keith Good's FarmPolicy.com .
For analysis, you can't do better than Peter Gallagher .
Revised November 11.
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