Breakthrough needed in Doha round by July

MANILA – The Doha Round of trade talks must reach a breakthrough by July or they will be stalled once again, World Trade Organisation director-general Pascal Lamy said in Manila on Friday.

He said the breakthrough must come before the expiration of the US President’s Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) on July 1, Lamy said. The TPA gives US President George W.Bush the power to submit trade deals for accelerated approval by lawmakers in a straight “yes” or “no” vote, without amendments.Lamy said that if the breakthrough could be achieved, a conclusion to the Doha trade talks could be reached in about eight months.But if the breakthrough does not take place, “we are back to where we were when the negotiations broke down,” last year, he said.This could lead to “an erosion of the multilateral trading system,” he warned.He defined a WTO breakthrough as reaching a “basic agreement on agricultural subsidies …agricultural tariffs and industrial tariff reductions.”The basic template to such an agreement is ready and negotiators only have to agree on “the precise numbers” in the accord, Lamy said.Lamy said the “major players,” namely the United States, the European Union, India, Brazil and Japan, were “consulting quietly with each other,” to ensure such a breakthrough could be achieved.The Doha talks, launched in 2001 in the Qatari capital, aims to remove barriers to global trade but are currently deadlocked, notably over steps to reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies.The WTO talks were suspended last July, but trade ministers at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month agreed that negotiations should resume.In a speech to Philippine businessmen Lamy stressed the country had much to gain in the success of the WTO talks, both in obtaining better access to foreign markets and in shoring up its own industries to foreign competition.Nampa-AFPThe TPA gives US President George W.Bush the power to submit trade deals for accelerated approval by lawmakers in a straight “yes” or “no” vote, without amendments.Lamy said that if the breakthrough could be achieved, a conclusion to the Doha trade talks could be reached in about eight months.But if the breakthrough does not take place, “we are back to where we were when the negotiations broke down,” last year, he said.This could lead to “an erosion of the multilateral trading system,” he warned.He defined a WTO breakthrough as reaching a “basic agreement on agricultural subsidies …agricultural tariffs and industrial tariff reductions.”The basic template to such an agreement is ready and negotiators only have to agree on “the precise numbers” in the accord, Lamy said.Lamy said the “major players,” namely the United States, the European Union, India, Brazil and Japan, were “consulting quietly with each other,” to ensure such a breakthrough could be achieved.The Doha talks, launched in 2001 in the Qatari capital, aims to remove barriers to global trade but are currently deadlocked, notably over steps to reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies.The WTO talks were suspended last July, but trade ministers at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month agreed that negotiations should resume.In a speech to Philippine businessmen Lamy stressed the country had much to gain in the success of the WTO talks, both in obtaining better access to foreign markets and in shoring up its own industries to foreign competition.Nampa-AFP