Ministers from the world's major trading nations said their efforts to narrow differences on how to open markets to more foreign goods and services are insufficient.
"We have been working in an incremental way and I don't believe we can get a deal in incremental steps," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told a press conference in London on Saturday. "What is lacking is the deep conviction that if we don't have an ambitious result, we won't have any result at all," he said.
Amorim's comments followed more than a dozen hours of meetings with ministers from the EU, US, India, Japan and Australia seeking to spur WTO talks. The ministers, who together represent 60 percent of global trade, have met several times since 2004 in an effort to reach a breakthrough that will lead to a broad accord this year.
The WTO's 149 governments have set an April 30 deadline to agree on formulas that would lower duties on farm and industrial goods ranging from grains to cranes. They have until the end of July to complete details of a trade accord that the World Bank says would be worth about US$96 billion to the international economy.
"We were able to see the broad outline of an agreement," US Trade Representative Rob Portman told journalists.
By negotiating for the first time with actual numbers and studying models that show the effect of proposed reductions, "we could see the good, the bad and the ugly of what we've been talking about," he said.
He and EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson have called on a group of developing nations to make substantial cuts to their customs duties for industrial and consumer goods.
The Philippines is working behind the scenes to enhance its defensive cooperation with Taiwan, the Washington Post said in a report published on Monday. “It would be hiding from the obvious to say that Taiwan’s security will not affect us,” Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro Jr told the paper in an interview on Thursday last week. Although there has been no formal change to the Philippines’ diplomatic stance on recognizing Taiwan, Manila is increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, the report said. The number of Chinese vessels in the seas around the Philippines, as well as Chinese
‘A SERIOUS THREAT’: Japan has expressed grave concern over the Strait’s security over the years, which demonstrated Tokyo’s firm support for peace in the area, an official said China’s military drills around Taiwan are “incompatible” with peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeshi Iwaya said during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi (王毅) on Thursday. “Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is important for the international community, including Japan,” Iwaya told Wang during a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related Foreign Ministers’ Meetings in Kuala Lumpur. “China’s large-scale military drills around Taiwan are incompatible with this,” a statement released by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday cited Iwaya as saying. The Foreign Ministers’ Meetings are a series of diplomatic
URBAN COMBAT: FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-fired missiles from the US made a rare public appearance during early-morning drills simulating an invasion of the Taipei MRT The ongoing Han Kuang military exercises entered their sixth day yesterday, simulating repelling enemy landings in Penghu County, setting up fortifications in Tainan, laying mines in waters in Kaohsiung and conducting urban combat drills in Taipei. At 5am in Penghu — part of the exercise’s first combat zone — participating units responded to a simulated rapid enemy landing on beaches, combining infantry as well as armored personnel. First Combat Zone Commander Chen Chun-yuan (陳俊源) led the combined armed troops utilizing a variety of weapons systems. Wang Keng-sheng (王鏗勝), the commander in charge of the Penghu Defense Command’s mechanized battalion, said he would give
‘REALISTIC’ APPROACH: The ministry said all the exercises were scenario-based and unscripted to better prepare personnel for real threats and unexpected developments The army’s 21st Artillery Command conducted a short-range air defense drill in Taoyuan yesterday as part of the Han Kuang exercises, using the indigenous Sky Sword II (陸射劍二) missile system for the first time in the exercises. The armed forces have been conducting a series of live-fire and defense drills across multiple regions, simulating responses to a full-scale assault by Chinese forces, the Ministry of National Defense said. The Sky Sword II missile system was rapidly deployed and combat-ready within 15 minutes to defend Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in a simulated attack, the ministry said. A three-person crew completed setup and
RSS