January 27, 2006	Friday	Zilhaj 26, 1426

DAVOS, Jan 26: US trade representative Rob Portman urged trading partners on Thursday to take risks and push for a balanced deal in stuttering global trade talks before a meeting of more than 20 WTO nations in Switzerland.

“In the ideal world you would have on the table some offers on increased access to the emerging developing countries for manufactured products, matched by new proposals on market access to the developed country markets on agriculture,” he told journalists.

“That would be a lot to ask because it involves a lot of risks on the part of all the parties but I think that’s what’s needed now,” he added on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

Ministers from about 25 key World Trade Organization nations, including the United States, European Union, India, Brazil, and WTO chief Pascal Lamy are due to hold an informal meeting in Davos late Friday to try to press ahead with the talks on breaking down trade barriers.

During his meeting with journalists, Portman placed the emphasis on opening up industrial and services markets, a key demand that industrialized powers like the US and EU have been making of their poorer counterparts.

Only last week Portman had been targeting the European Union instead, reiterating that the EU must make bolder proposals to reform its heavily protected farm sector.

EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson reiterated on Monday that he wanted other partners to move first before he makes new offers to developing nations on the vexed question of agriculture.

A full ministerial meeting is due in April to try to sew up the full framework for a deal and steer the Doha Round to completion at the end of the year.

The Davos mini-ministerial meeting comes over a month after the WTO’s 149 members failed to achieve the full framework for the Doha Round at a conference in Hong Kong, leaving out crunch issues such as cuts in agricultural tariffs and opening up commerce in services and industrial goods.

Instead, they agreed on an end-date of 2013 to remove farm export subsidies, a swift end to cotton subsidies and the opening of rich country markets to more goods from the world’s poorest nations.—AFP