June 24, 2006	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 27, 1427

RIYADH, June 23: The 12 Arab member states of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are to form their own distinct negotiating bloc within the group, Egypt’s trade and industry minister Mohamed Rachid was quoted here on Friday as saying.

Mohamed Rachid announced that the group would be informing the WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy of the new entity by letter.

The 12 countries — Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE -- hope in due course some other six Arab states currently in talks to joining the WTO, would also become a part of the newly formed Arab group.

Speaking to reporters at a meeting of Arab ministers, Rachid said: “We have an Arab group; this didn’t exist until today.”

Despite making common cause with their new identity, he said that the agreement did not mean that all the members would be of the same opinion on every issue.

This would be solved, he said, by seeking a level of consensus he called “minimum agreement.”

He added that the WTO was open to such ventures and that initial discussions with Lamy had gained a positive response.

Under the new grouping countries will be able to keep preferential trade agreements with other nations which do not apply to the other Arab states in the group.