April 05, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 16, 1428

ISLAMABAD, April 4: Major players of the multilateral trading system are meeting next week in New Delhi to invent new methods to achieve a breakthrough in the stalled WTO Doha round talks for reaching a successful conclusion.

This is a crucial moment for the Doha Development Agenda. The next few weeks will determine its eventual outcome. Since January last, some of the major players, including the EU, US, and Brazil and India on behalf of the G20, have been given space by the rest of the WTO membership to establish a greater degree of convergence among themselves.

It is not for these negotiators to reach a final agreement, but other WTO members expect them to come back to the membership with a consensus-building package and initiate the final collective stage of the negotiation.

A senior official told Dawn that a ministerial level discussion would be held in New Delhi to be attended by EU trade commissioner, India, the US and Brazil are also expected to participate in the meeting scheduled for April 11-12.

This would be a crucial meeting to use the remaining window of opportunity to intensify and accelerate the process of negotiation. If no breakthrough is made in these talks, Doha’s prospects for this year will be lost.

Recent bilateral discussions have made progress on establishing a framework for convergence in agriculture, but a large amount of work remains to be done and the negotiations urgently need to move beyond agriculture into the economically vital areas of trade in goods and services. The clock is now ticking until the US negotiator’s fast track negotiating authority runs out at the end of June.

According to the official, another important event was of Cairns Group Ministerial Meeting, which was scheduled to start from April 16 in Lahore.