Asia-Pacific leaders will this week press for the urgent revival of deadlocked world trade talks and urge crucial concessions from the major players, a draft statement said yesterday.
Hailing upcoming negotiations in Geneva as an "unparalleled" opportunity to make progress, the APEC forum will make a last-ditch appeal to sparring trade nations.
The appeal comes with key negotiators scheduled to gather for intensive discussions this week in Geneva aimed at sealing an agreement that would save the Doha round of WTO talks on breaking down global trade barriers.
"We all realize that the stakes are high. Time is running out," said David Spencer, Australia's ambassador to APEC.
In the draft statement, obtained by Agence France Presse, the leaders "pledge to push hard for the progress necessary to ensure the Doha Round negotiations enter their final phase this year."
"There has never been a more urgent need to make progress," the draft statement said.
"The negotiations offer unparalleled potential to lower barriers to trade and to create a freer, fairer and more secure global market in which we can all compete," it said.
"We insist that consensus will only be possible on the basis of an ambitious, balanced result that delivers substantial, real market access for agricultural and industrial goods and for services, as well as reductions in trade-distorting agricultural subsidies," it said.
The draft statement holds out hope that the Doha talks could still succeed.
"The negotiations are undeniably difficult and complex. But real progress has already been made in many areas and it is our firm view that the remaining differences can be successfully bridged," the statement said.
But a senior Southeast Asian official involved in the preparatory meetings for the Sydney summit said the statement lacked punch because it does not give concrete commitments that can break the impasse.
"No one is saying what they are prepared to concede," said the source, who asked not to be named.
The official said it was crucial for the US to take the lead in saying how far it is prepared to go in cutting domestic farm subsidies, and for the US president to be given fast-track negotiating power.
That power expired in June and has not been renewed by the US Congress.
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