WTO leaders push for final accord
GENEVA, Switzerland -- The World Trade Organization's top leaders have launched a final bid for an agreement that they hope will revive stalled talks on global free trade.
WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi and General Council chairman Shotaro Oshima circulated a 20-page blueprint Friday that is effectively their last chance for agreement.
Officials and delegates to the 147-nation WTO have been meeting in Geneva this week, striving for an accord that will bring developing nations into line with the world's trading system. They have set midnight Friday as their deadline.
The blueprint from Supachai and Oshima calls for the elimination of farm export subsidies and sets out other principles for reforming agricultural trade, Reuters news agency reported Friday.
It also lays down guidelines for opening up business in industrial goods and services and for launching negotiations on an customs' code.
On Thursday Supachai welcomed an agreement on an agricultural text among five key WTO members
The talks between the five -- Brazil, the United States, the European Union, Australia and India -- could open the way for a trade pact by the full 147 member states, an official involved in the talks told Reuters.
"It brings the possibility of an agreement (of the full membership) nearer," the negotiator said.
The five nations are considered to represent a wide range of trade interests within the WTO.
The last time the WTO reached a major agreement was 10 years ago in Marrakech. Since then, talks collapsed in Seattle in 1999 amid scenes of rioting by anti-globalization protesters.
They also collapsed in Cancun, Mexico last year, when developing countries took issue with Europe and the United States over subsidies.
The current series of talks began in Doha, Qatar, with the main aim of helping developing countries build their own farm trade. The problem is how to get everyone to agree.
"It's very, very challenging. I mean the negotiations are probably covering the broadest scope they have done ever inside the WTO," says Ross Denton of Baker & Mackenzie.
"And of course you've got more members -- 147 members. And you've also got each of these individual members now asserting themselves and saying they won't agree to any package they don't like."
The European Union has proposed ending its subsidies of exports provided the United States ends its credits on exports.
Economists say it's not just the traditional EU-U.S. divisions that could pose problems -- there are also new divisions opening up in the developing world.
"If this meeting succeeds, it means Doha is back on track and it will probably survive all the political changes that are taking place in Washington and in Brussels," says Simon Cox of The Economist.
"If it fails, then people will really start to wonder whether the WTO system will work."
-- CNN's Meara Erdozain contributed to this report.
