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WTO delegates on 24 April said that they would not meet an important end-April deadline for a framework deal on cutting agricultural tariffs, farm subsidies and duties on industrial goods as part of the Doha Round of negotiations. Citing wide divisions in the agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) talks, they agreed with WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy’s assessment that it would be pointless to summon national trade ministers to Geneva for a high-level meeting at the end of the month, as suggested by a previous deadline, since there was no realistic chance of striking a substantive agreement. Instead, Lamy asked delegates to engage in non-stop negotiations in the weeks to come on technical issues, such as exemptions from reduction commitments in agriculture and NAMA talks. This would, he suggested, allow ministers to make the necessary political decisions about the extent of tariff and subsidy cuts. Getting to text-based negotiations as quickly as possible should be Members’ “immediate objective”, he said.
The WTO chief did not specify any new deadlines, but warned that waiting until the end of July for detailed parameters in the two areas “would guarantee failure”. In the agriculture negotiations, Chair Ambassador Crawford Falconer of New Zealand has outlined a schedule for six weeks of continuous negotiations that will be based on ‘reference papers’ that describe areas of agreement and divergence and are expected to evolve into draft text. NAMA Chair Ambassador Don Stephenson of Canada will also resume consultations next week. The priority assigned to these two negotiating areas by many Members, and the relatively slow progress in reaching consensus on the basic parameters of new rules (”modalities”), will in coming weeks lead delegations to focus their time and efforts on these talks, potentially at the expense of so-called “endgame” issues such as special and differential treatment or environmental goods and services.
For additional information on current negotiations at the WTO, see Bridges Weekly, 26 April 2006.
ICTSD Reporting.
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