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WTO talks will have to wait till next year
Any new attempt to grasp the grail of a world trade pact will probably have to wait until next year, after elections in the US and India, despite some calls for more talks now, economists say.
The head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, who stressed after the collapse of the talks in Geneva last week that the gains made in nine days must remain on the table, revealed on Friday that talks at technical level were in fact continuing. He also said he expected to visit India in a week's time and perhaps the United States later.
He was referring to two of the countries at the centre of the emotional breakdown of talks which, participants agreed, had almost joined hands across a deep gulf over special arrangements for protection against a flood of imports. And a senior WTO official told AFP: "It seems practically impossible to conclude negotiations before the end of the year.
"The idea is to continue to advance to be able to present a package all tied up to the new US administration and to India after the [US presidential] elections," he said.
Meanwhile, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said: "The talks will not be able to resume until after the American elections."
The talks last week struggled late into many nights and through many issues affecting directly or indirectly the peoples of the world, of all classes in all sectors on all continents. There was general agreement, but from different angles, that the world's poorest stand to gain or los the most.
The breakdown threw up various views of the future, from analysis that emerging countries have gained new stature to suggestions that the talks should treat agriculture separately from other subjects. Stiglitz said a quick resumption of the talks was all the more unlikely because it is "difficult to negotiate an accord when unemployment is on the rise and the economy is weakening."
India, one of the key players at the talks, is also facing elections at the end of the year, which leaves the government little room for concessions. The audacious attempt in Geneva to break apart a seven-year log jam in the so-called Doha Round of trade opening talks, hit deadlock between India and the US over the so-called special safeguard mechanism.
This enables countries to impose a special tariff on goods in the event of an import surge or price fall. Stiglitz was scathing of Washington's insistence that extra duties should be imposed only if imports surged by 40 per cent.
The head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, who stressed after the collapse of the talks in Geneva last week that the gains made in nine days must remain on the table, revealed on Friday that talks at technical level were in fact continuing. He also said he expected to visit India in a week's time and perhaps the United States later.
He was referring to two of the countries at the centre of the emotional breakdown of talks which, participants agreed, had almost joined hands across a deep gulf over special arrangements for protection against a flood of imports. And a senior WTO official told AFP: "It seems practically impossible to conclude negotiations before the end of the year.
"The idea is to continue to advance to be able to present a package all tied up to the new US administration and to India after the [US presidential] elections," he said.
Meanwhile, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said: "The talks will not be able to resume until after the American elections."
The talks last week struggled late into many nights and through many issues affecting directly or indirectly the peoples of the world, of all classes in all sectors on all continents. There was general agreement, but from different angles, that the world's poorest stand to gain or los the most.
The breakdown threw up various views of the future, from analysis that emerging countries have gained new stature to suggestions that the talks should treat agriculture separately from other subjects. Stiglitz said a quick resumption of the talks was all the more unlikely because it is "difficult to negotiate an accord when unemployment is on the rise and the economy is weakening."
India, one of the key players at the talks, is also facing elections at the end of the year, which leaves the government little room for concessions. The audacious attempt in Geneva to break apart a seven-year log jam in the so-called Doha Round of trade opening talks, hit deadlock between India and the US over the so-called special safeguard mechanism.
This enables countries to impose a special tariff on goods in the event of an import surge or price fall. Stiglitz was scathing of Washington's insistence that extra duties should be imposed only if imports surged by 40 per cent.