June 16, 2006	Friday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 19, 1427

ISLAMABAD, June 15: Pakistan is taking seriously the end-June deadline for a deal on `modalities’ on how much the Doha round will offer cuts in farm subsidies as well as tariffs on both agriculture and industrial products for make or break of a multilateral trading regime.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy had already announced the end-June 2006 deadline for a deal to unlock the negotiations in order to wrap up the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) launched in 2001 by the end of the current year, as was agreed at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in December last year.

A senior official told Dawn that a high-level official delegation led by Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan would leave on June 25 or 26 for Geneva to attend the WTO general council meeting, which was supposed to finalise the modalities for both farm and industrial goods.

Under the Hong Kong Declaration, the WTO members are also supposed to agree to liberalise services trade by July 31, besides other issues, including trade facilitation, anti-dumping, how to restrain fisheries subsidies.