Pascal Lamy

The goal of signing a new global commerce deal next year is out of reach unless countries accelerate their negotiations, the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) director-general Pascal Lamy has said.

The WTO's 153 members must turn vague discussions on the Doha round into real negotiations with concrete proposals laid down on paper, he told a meeting of the full membership.

"We have not yet seen tangible progress in the negotiations and, overall, I would say that the current speed with which we are advancing is too slow ... to be in a position to wrap this round next year," Lamy was quoted as saying in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News.

Despite an intensive work programme agreed last month, talks have not achieved enough to reach a core deal in the Doha negotiations, now in their eighth year, by early next year, he said.

That skeleton accord would be necessary to reach an overall detailed deal next year, as called for by political leaders.

WTO members from Brazil to China expressed concern that the talks were even losing ground, in line with gloom after a meeting on Thursday (October 22) of key delegations.

Thursday’s meeting had been called to take stock of progress after a week of talks attended by senior officials from capitals and to discuss the next moves.

Many members objected to the format of the talks, where negotiations on the full range of trade issues - reinforced once a month by senior officials from national capitals - are complemented by bilateral contacts and meetings in small groups.

Argentina, Switzerland and others complained in particular about a series of meetings of a dozen countries hosted by the European Union that touched on key issues of interest to them.

Turkey's WTO ambassador, Bozkurt Aran, told yesterday's session that it was the least promising meeting since he arrived in Geneva just over a year ago, according to one participant. But Lamy said the format was not important if members were unwilling to move on questions of substance. – TradeArabia News Service