Santiago, November 9:

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called today for the troubled Doha Round of international trade talks to be quickly wrapped up with a deal focusing on development. “We must ensure an early conclusion of the Doha Round of trade talks with a meaningful development package,” he said at the opening of the Ibero-American summit in the Chilean capital Santiago.

Chilean president Michelle Bachelet backed the appeal, saying ‘it would be unforgivable to not reach a multilateral agreement in the Doha Round’ and described the negotiations as ‘a development round’.

She added that trade barriers were preventing Latin America from earning ‘$140 billion in extra revenue’. The global trade talks, started in the Qatari capital in 2001 and held under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), have been bogged down in disagreements between rich and poor countries.

Industrialised states want better access for their services in poorer economies, while developing states are holding out for cuts in rich states’ subsidies and import tariffs on farm products.

Ban, who was on the second leg of a South American tour comprising Argentina, Chile and Brazil, also said that he was not changing the UN’s Millennium Goals set in 2000, which aim to cut world poverty in half by 2015. “The 2015 target date is a goal post that cannot be moved,” he said.

“The clock is ticking louder every day. To reach goals on time we have to take concerted action now,” he said, adding, “Clearly, we are facing an emergency.” Ban noted that, in Latin America, poverty has dropped from 19 per cent of the population to 13 per cent over the past 15 years. But, he stressed, that still left 200 million poor, of whom more than a third were living in extreme poverty, while the region was receiving less development aid.