GENEVA, Sept 9: Trade officials are toying with the idea of resuming talks on the Doha Round in the coming weeks, though some say negotiating fatigue and the US election mean it is too early for another push.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has not said what lies ahead for the global trade accord its 153 member states have been trying for nearly seven years to grasp.

Nine-day talks to reach an outline deal collapsed in July when ministers from seven key economies locked horns on working of an emergency tool to shield poor farmers in India and elsewhere during import surges.

Senior officials from United States, European Union, India, Brazil, Australia, China and Japan are meeting this week in Geneva to take another look at that special safeguard mechanism to decide if it makes sense to restart wider talks cutting tariffs and subsidies worldwide.

Several diplomats said it was hard to imagine whole-hearted negotiations, given the US elections, that could change Washington’s stance in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks.

And before the multilateral talks can resume in full, the WTO will need to select a new chair for the negotiating group on industrial goods, following the departure of Canadian ambassador Don Stephenson who has returned to Ottawa.

That selection is expected to be finalised by the next meeting of the General Council in October, and could be set sooner if the WTO membership decides on a candidate and the Doha talks get a new spurt of energy.

The G7 meetings are expected to wrap up on Wednesday, the same day the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is due to start its particle-smashing accelerator that will replicate the conditions of the Big Bang at its complex near Geneva.

“If we hear a big bang, it might be the negotiations restarting,” one trade official joked on Tuesday.—Reuters