CAIRO, Nov 14: Twelve African countries meeting in Cairo said on Friday that they want to restart WTO multilateral trade talks following the failure of September’s conference in Cancun.

“Participants called for a resumption of multilateral negotiations under the aegis of the WTO,” Egyptian Foreign Trade Minister Youssef Butros Ghali said at the start of the 12-nation two-day summit.

“African countries reiterated their commitment to the agenda of the Doha talks which marks a real opportunity for African countries to increase the volume of their contribution to international commerce, and at the same time consolidate their development objectives,” he said.

The 2001 Doha World Trade Organization negotiations in the Qatari capital put the development of poor countries at the heart of liberalizing world commerce, he said, adding that access to agricultural markets is a “priority for African countries”.

The minister emphasized that the African countries saw a speech made by Cancun conference chairman, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, as “a good point for restarting the negotiations”.

However, he said that “radical changes” were required.

Also present at the Cairo summit were WTO director general Supachai Panitchpakdi, trade ministers from Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria and Senegal, and representatives from Benin and South Africa.

WTO ministers gathered in Cancun in early September in a bid to breathe life into moribund trade-liberalization talks launched in Doha two year ago and due to conclude by January 1, 2005.

But the meeting collapsed after bickering over cross-border investment and competition added to a more fundamental dispute about farm subsidies in richer states and the high tariffs on agriculture imports from developing nations.—AFP