GENEVA, Feb 14: World Trade Organization member states said on Monday they were aiming to come up with an "endgame document" by the end of the year as they stepped up the pace of troubled global trade talks.
Negotiators said after a meeting of the WTO's key negotiating body that there was a widespread desire to agree on the outlines of a new round of liberalization in agriculture and industrial goods at a ministerial conference in Hong Kong in December.
"We're very pleased at this sense, that is shared very widely, that we need to complete the round successfully by 2006," US Deputy Trade Representative Peter Allgeier.
"People understand that means that by Hong Kong we have got to have what we call an endgame document," he told journalists following a meeting in Geneva with the 147 other member states in the Trade Negotiations Committee.
Building on a gathering of a select group of 25 ministers on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, the WTO is aiming to have a first draft ready before a summer break in July.
"July must be a marker in our process," WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi told the meeting, saying that the results of talks by then needed to be "sufficiently ambitious".
"If we can maintain the current level of commitment and effort, and keep our focus on substance, I firmly believe Hong Kong can set the stage for a successful conclusion of the Doha Round in 2006," he added.
There was broad support for that thrust from other member states while technical talks since last summer in sectors such as agriculture and industrial product had yielded some progress, a trade source said.
"People cannot be vague about what they want in Hong Kong. That's our idea, that we should shoot for full modalities on Non Agricultural Market Access and agriculture," said senior Brazilian trade official Clodoaldo Hugueney. -AFP
