By Xinhua
Geneva : World Trade Organisation (WTO) members resumed intensive negotiations on the long-stalled Doha Round of global trade talks, trying to narrow their differences in the next few weeks.
The negotiations that began Monday will be focussed on agriculture and NAMA (non-agricultural market access), the two major fields that have blocked the six-year old Doha Round from making progress, trade officials said.
Crawford Falconer, the chairman for farm negotiations, said all WTO members were prepared to “roll their sleeves up and get to work” following the summer break.
He described Monday’s first informal session on agriculture as a promising start.
But he told reporters afterwards that the test of negotiators’ ability to progress depends on consultations in the coming days and on how much they achieve by around mid-October.
Falconer indicated that the talks would have to make progress by mid-October or they would lose momentum.
According to WTO sources, the negotiations in the next few weeks will take various forms, including full session of all 151 WTO members and small group meetings.
There will be a short stocktaking period after Sep 21, and then the negotiations will resume and continue until about mid-October.
The Doha Round was launched in 2001 with an aim to lower trade barriers to boost the global economy and help the poor countries’ development.
But the negotiations have been stalled due to sharp and complicated differences between the WTO’s major members on agriculture trade and industrial market access.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has warned that the talks should be concluded by the end of the year or early next year, otherwise they risk a long frozen period that would have negative influence on global economic growth and the multilateral trade system.