WTO director-general Pascal Lamy said yesterday that the Doha Round should conclude by next year, following two days of negotiations in Indonesia.
Lamy was speaking to reporters after talks between US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and his Indian counterpart, Anand Sharma, in Bali, where members of the Cairns Group of farm exporters have been discussing stalled world trade talks.
“What I saw is Ron Kirk and Anand Sharma clearly engaging in a process that should lead to the conclusion of the round some time next year,” Lamy said.
PHOTO: AFP
“We should conclude this by 2010,” he added.
Washington’s refusal to accept Indian demands for measures to protect vulnerable industries from a flood of cheap imports contributed to the failure of the last round of Doha negotiations in Geneva last July.
“The signals that Ron Kirk and Anand Sharma gave are clearly signals that they want to get things done, which were not there until now,” Lamy said.
“We had not had that clear signal of ‘reset’ until now,” he added.
Earlier yesterday Kirk had said the US was committed to outlining a basis for negotiations over the stalled Doha talks.
“Doing nothing, rejecting pursuing an alternative to what we have been doing for the past three rounds is in fact a decision that leads to a failure of Doha, and that is not an acceptable conclusion,” he told reporters.
Kirk met Sharma for the first time on the sidelines of the Cairns Group meeting on Monday.
“We are not looking at the difficulties, we are looking at the possibilities, to do our best and take this process to its culmination,” Sharma said.
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