GENEVA, Feb 10: The six leading members of the World Trade Organization are to meet in London in March in an attempt to spur movement in the Doha round of trade liberalization talks, diplomatic sources told AFP on Friday.
The ministerial meeting, planned for March 10-11, will bring together representatives from the United States, the European Union, India, Brazil, Japan and Australia, the diplomats said after asking to remain anonymous.
US Trade Secretary Rob Portman and EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson will meet with their ministerial counterparts in an attempt to make headway on lowering customs tariffs on agricultural goods.
The 149 members of the WTO have given themselves a deadline of April 30 to forge an agreement on the question, the most troublesome of all outstanding issues in the Doha round of talks.
The Doha round, launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001 and should have been concluded at the end of 2004, is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.
The six leading members are hoping to come to an agreement that can be extended to smaller members of the WTO, an approach not always appreciated by the smaller members themselves.
A full WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong last December enabled member countries to agree on the elimination of agricultural export subsidies by 2013, but the issue of customs tariffs remained unsettled.
The biggest exporting countries, Australia, Brazil and the US, are asking members such as Japan and the EU to lower their tariffs on farm goods but these latter countries are demanding that developing countries reduce tariffs on industrial goods in return.—AFP
