October 18, 2006	Wednesday	Ramazan 24, 1427

GENEVA, Oct 17: World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz on Tuesday called on World Trade Organisation members to ensure that the poorest countries get improved terms in deadlocked talks on breaking down trade barriers.

“Whatever else comes out of Doha, there should be something special that deals with the poorest countries,” he told a meeting of parliamentarians from around the world in Geneva.

Wolfowitz also indicated that one of the few successes in the five-year talks, a deal struck at a WTO meeting in Hong Kong in December 2005 to grant some concessions to least developed countries, should go further.

Industrialised countries, and some developing nations, promised then to give duty-free and quota-free access to “at least 97 per cent” of goods from the world’s least developed countries from 2008.

Wolfowitz told the assembly of the Inter Parliamentary Union, which groups MPs from 146 countries, that trading nations should “expand” on the deal on customs duties for the 32 poorest nations in the WTO.—AFP