Bid to revive Doha Round

Published March 3, 2007

GENEVA, March 2: Ministers from four key power brokers in the World Trade Organisation — Brazil, the EU, India and the US — will meet in the next few days to try to unblock global trade talks, officials said on Friday.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, India's Minister of Commerce Kamal Nath and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, are due to meet in London over the weekend, officials close to the talks said.

They will then move on to Geneva on Monday and Tuesday where they are expected to meet WTO Director General Pascal Lamy individually, a trade source said.

Lamy has been trying to re-launch the faltering round of negotiations on breaking down barriers to trade in agriculture, services and industrial goods which were launched in the Qatari capital, Doha in 2001.

An agreement between the world's two biggest trading powers, the US and EU, and the two leading developing or emerging nations Brazil and India, is widely regarded as crucial to the hopes of brokering a compromise among the WTO's 150 members this year.—AFP

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