Foreign Policy Blogs

Falling Short

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At the end of July 29, Lamy announced that ministers’ efforts of long hours and hard negotiations failed to produce result on the 9th day of WTO trade talks. Today, he has called a formal Trade Negotiations Committe meeting to provide a forum for comment from members, but he advises nations to allow the “dust to settle” before re-addressing next steps for moving past this hump.

"It is no use beating around the bush. This meeting has collapsed. Members have not been able to bridge their differences,"

Lamy said to reporters. He however refused to allow disappointment of the outcome from this series of talks eclipse the progress made, saying that this round produced twice to thrice more achieved in any other multilateral trade negotiations. Of the 20 topics on a “to-do” list, 18 of them saw progress, though discrepancies on the 19th ‚ the special safeguard mechanism for developing countries — could not be resolved. "After more than 36 hours trying to find bridges between these two positions, today it became clear that the differences were irreconcilable. The remaining issues, including cotton, were not even negotiated."

Lamy remains confident that the Doha Round will continue despite this past week's failed efforts. For complete coverage on his formal statement yesterday, go to the WTO site.