Rio De Janeiro, September 10 :

Nearly 30 emerging and developing countries cal-led yesterday for the resu-mption of collapsed World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade talks, urging rich countries to significantly pry open their markets to agricultural products.

The 23 emerging countries of the Group of 20 (G20) and four representatives of developing countries declared in a statement they were ‘ready to immediately resume the negotiations and work toward their rapid resumption.’ “This is an excellent chance to put the Doha Round back on track,” said Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim of the two-day long meeting. “What is at stake is the international order,” Amorim said at a news conference.

“If we don’t produce results that preserve the multilateral system in the trade arena, how are we going to preserve the international order in the face of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, drug trafficking, smuggling?” he said. Today, negotiators representing the US, the EU and Japan are due to examine with the meeting’s participants the prospects of restarting the WTO negotiations to free up global trade.

The WTO suspended the Doha Round talks after negotiators from six major players failed to hammer out the framework of an accord after five years.