‘WTO summit preps going smoothly’

HONG KONG – Seeking to ease fears over this year’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit, host city Hong Kong yesterday said preparations were going smoothly.

Trade secretary John Tsang, who will chair the sixth ministerial meeting here in December, said logistics, security and content issues were being dealt with. “The preparation is going quite satisfactorily,” Tsang told reporters.”We are quite happy with the progress so far.”The summit is hoped to conclude the Doha round of talks between the world’s nations after four years of often heated negotiations designed to reduce trade protectionism and the use of trade to aid development in poorer countries.However, the organisation’s failure to hammer out an interim agreement in July prompted speculation that the December ministerial meeting was doomed to failure.Tsang conceded there had been some hitches in the run-up to the December 13-18 summit but said he was confident progress would be made.”(There are) complications, but what we have been able to gather …is that we are coming out with middle-of-the-road positions and those are very healthy developments.””We hope to capture upon this momentum and bring it to a significant result by the time we have our ministerial conference here.”-Nampa-Reuters”The preparation is going quite satisfactorily,” Tsang told reporters.”We are quite happy with the progress so far.”The summit is hoped to conclude the Doha round of talks between the world’s nations after four years of often heated negotiations designed to reduce trade protectionism and the use of trade to aid development in poorer countries.However, the organisation’s failure to hammer out an interim agreement in July prompted speculation that the December ministerial meeting was doomed to failure.Tsang conceded there had been some hitches in the run-up to the December 13-18 summit but said he was confident progress would be made.”(There are) complications, but what we have been able to gather …is that we are coming out with middle-of-the-road positions and those are very healthy developments.””We hope to capture upon this momentum and bring it to a significant result by the time we have our ministerial conference here.”-Nampa-Reuters