Agence France Presse

Geneva, July 27:

The World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) 148 members began a three-day long negotiating session today, taking stock of efforts to keep their stumbling Doha Round talks on track.

In the face of persistent splits and with a key summit in Hong Kong just five months away, the pressure is on to accelerate talks that members hope will lead to a wide-ranging trade liberalisation accord in 2006. The Wednesday to Friday session of the WTO General Council — its top negotiating body — was set to deliver a read out on almost four years of on-off talks and ponder what is feasible in Hong Kong. Among top officials scheduled to attend were EU trade chief Peter Mandelson and Kamal Nath, India’s trade minister.

“A lot of hard work is going to be required in the coming months but at this stage there is no question that this can still be done by Hong Kong,” said a trade source. Key issues on the table include agricultural tariffs and export subsidies, mainly in wealthy nations, industrial tariff barriers, and special treatment for the poorest countries, diplomats said.

The ultimate goal of the Doha Round, launched in Qatar in 2001, is a treaty that cuts barriers to commerce, and uses trade to boost developing countries. WTO members are trying to avoid a replay of their failed Cancun summit in Mexico in 2003. The rift there centred largely on the farm trade, of key interest to poor countries, and commerce in services, a cornerstone of wealthy nations’ demands Last summer, members made some progress towards settling the dispute with an interim deal focusing on agriculture that aimed to guide later negotiations. But progress has been limited since then.

They also made July 2005 the informal target for a so-called ‘first approximation’ — a loose draft of their trade agreement. “Members set themselves informally some pretty high objectives,” said a trade source, “There were never precise but they were ambitiously non-precise. We are not going to make those objectives. That’s clear.”

Trade diplomats are nonetheless trying to stay optimistic, noting that negotiations have continued to inch ahead. “It’s important we don’t lose sight of the fact that progress these last couple of weeks and indeed these past few days has been made,” said the trade source. There has been ‘real engagement’ on trade in industrial goods, the source said, “And even in agriculture, we have delineated with a greater degree of clarity than ever before exactly where the key problems are. We’ve had some proposals that were more detailed than we have seen in the past. We’ve had real negotiations.”

This week is outgoing WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi’s last chance to spur the Doha Round. The Thai ends his term on August 31, handing over the job of director-general to Frenchman Pascal Lamy. Supachai last week said he had “pressed the alarm button,” despite a glimmer of hope earlier this month from the G8 summit of top industrialised nations. Leaders there called for the abolition of agricultural export subsidies by an unspecified ‘credible end date.’