'The background for the Saudi-Pakistan agreement is the fact that the regional security order has collapsed due to the Israeli attack on Doha.' 'The Americans have largely abandoned their security guarantee for West Asia and the region has no choice but to look at alternatives.'
WTO summit will see whether decade-long negotiations would go forward or be brought to an end.
The WTO mini-ministerial scheduled to be held later this month to break the impasse on crucial farm and industrial tariff negotiations has been called off.
Britain on Thursday said it was unlikely that the next World Trade Organisation Ministerial will be held this year, indicating that completion of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations will miss the deadline of January 01, 2005.
The Indonesian Minister's comments assume significance as she is also a candidate for the position of Director General, World Trade Organisation.
The government on Monday said the progress in majority of the issues covered by the Doha Work Programme has been uneven
While India's defensive concerns on special products are broadly taken on the board in the latest revised draft text on Doha agricultural modalities issued last Thursday, its demands in regard to the use of special safeguard mechanism remain to be adequately addressed, trade negotiators said.
It is only through a trade-opening global pact that issues like distorting subsidies or generating market access can be addressed, the WTO chief emphasised.
It was always foolhardy to expect the US and the EU to want to genuinely open up at a time their economies are in deep trouble.
Gloom over ministerial, courtesy US-China spar, conflict between cotton-producing African nations.
India has consistently demanded that about 8 per cent of farm tariff lines to be exempted from the tariff reduction commitments while 12 per cent of tariff lines to be subjected to a minimum cut below 10 per cent. The United States, Australia, Uruguay, Thailand and Malaysia, however, vehemently opposed India's demands during what are called the Walk in Woods meetings convened by the chair for Doha agriculture negotiations Ambassador Crawford Falconer last week.
The Doha negotiations has been virtually stalled since July 2008.
A day ahead of a World Trade Organization informal ministerial meeting at Paris, India said on Wednesday it will not accept attempts by developed countries to shift goal posts of the Doha mandate that calls for an equitable global trade deal.
India on Thursday approved crucial amendments in the WTO agreement on TRIPS permitting governments to break the monopoly of manufacturers of patented drugs by giving 'compulsory licenses' in emergency situations.
The Obama administration has not received any specific assurances from India that it will help carry the developing countries with it to help successfully complete the stalled Doha Development Agenda, but the fact that New Delhi is hosting the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting exudes optimism in this regard, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has acknowledged
The aim at the meeting, which will see participation from negotiators of 37 countries, is to generate an agreement on clear directions to negotiators to re-energise the multilateral process at the World Trade Organization. The approach followed, so far, in the negotiations has been to get member-countries to agree on modalities for cutting tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods, gradually eliminating export subsidies and reducing agricultural subsidies.
World Trade Organisation director-general Pascal Lamy now maintains that it is rather early to set the dates for a ministerial meeting to finalise the modalities for cutting agricultural subsidies and import as well as industrial tariffs, trade envoys said.
The statement has put paid to Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean's "controversial" ideas.
India's chief trade negotiator Rahul Khullar yesterday warned that the much-planned ministerial meeting, which the World Trade Organisation Director General Pascal Lamy wants to convene soon, can succeed only if there was a revised Doha Rules text reflecting the concerns of all the members and an immediate resolution of TRIPS-CBD issue.
Underlining the need to step up regional co-operation and trade particularly in energy and telecom sectors, India and Australia agreed on Wednesday to work together for the implementation of the Doha Development Agenda.
India will make yet another effort at the ministerial level to give a push to Doha Round of WTO trade talks before leaders of the G-20 meet in Seoul next month.
Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has issued several signals about his government's commitment to conclude the Doha talks, saying it is a priority issue for New Delhi. While many industrialised countries, including some developing nations, praised Sharma for adopting a conciliatory stance to break the 'impasse,' other members in the developing world are apprehensive about New Delhi's stance, especially its discussions with the US trade representative, trade envoys said.
Ahead of the G-8 meeting in Tokyo next month, WTO negotiations have picked up pace in Geneva with a strong expectation of receiving support for a Doha deal from leaders of industrialised nations such as US, EU and key developing countries like India and South Africa. Though India is not a member of G-8, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be attending the meeting along with heads of other four 'outreach' countries that include Brazil.
The differences between the rich and developing nations have always been at the core of the World Trade Organisation, set up in 1995 to facilitate greater trade flows across the world, and it came as a major breakthrough when the US and India reached a deal over food security issues in 2014.
The 10th ministerial conference, will be held at Nairobi, Kenya.
The United States, Blinken said, is committed to looking at everything done from day one through the present and draw lessons from it.
Amid uncertainty over the mini-ministerial meeting starting today, the two powerful trade chiefs of the United States and the European Union sought India's assistance to break the deadlock over sectoral tariff elimination and the anti-concentration provision in return for supporting New Delhi's demand on enhanced flexibilities for special products and special safeguard mechanism
Anand Sharma who is at the WTO meet at Bali has been making all the right noises in opposing the peace clause. However at 9 PM on Friday, he will have to make a crucial decision.
Considering that Qatar is a trusted ally of Washington for decades, it is expected to be a steady influence on the Taliban leadership, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
With an intent to give a push to India-Qatar ties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on Sunday held detailed talks on a wide range of issues.
'It was always anticipated that the return of the Taliban would embolden armed Islamists including anti-India groups like the Lashkar and Jaish.'
India scored a remarkable win on food security, but trade partners will now put pressure on New Delhi to provide meaningful openings for industrial goods and services and be more accommodative on liberalising tariffs.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to India on June 23 to co-chair the 4th India-US strategic dialogue, his spokesperson said on Wednesday.
India had proposed amending the formula to calculate the food subsidy cap of 10 per cent.
Meeting will confine discussion to processes involved in building consensus among members.
In the first informal meeting held four days before the ministerial being convened by World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy, many developing countries have further hardened their stand on several aspects of the latest Nama text issued last week. Besides, it violated the cardinal principle of a less-than-full reciprocity in Nama that requires developing countries to undertake bigger commitments than the developed countries.
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