WTO ministerial meeting concludes without agreement

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, September 16, 2003

WTO ministerial meeting concludes without agreement

Ministers from the 146 members of the World Trade Organization failed to reach a common ground on a free- trade declaration Sunday in Cancun.

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The fifth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) concluded Sunday afternoon in Cancun of Mexico without any agreement reached between members.

A ministerial statement, released by the WTO secretariat following the conclusion of the five-day meeting, said officials will continue working on outstanding issues with a "renewed sense of urgency and purpose."

A meeting of the General Council at the senior official level will be convened no later than Dec. 15 this year to take the action "necessary at that stage to enable us to move towards a successful and timely conclusion of the negotiations," said the statement.

Delegates from Kenya and some other developing members said earlier that the meeting collapsed because of a huge gap in the positions between developed members and developing ones.

One concrete result was that Cambodia and Nepal acceded to the WTO as the first two least-developed countries since the WTO was established in 1995.

Civil society Actionaid blamed the rich countries for the failure to come to any agreement.

"The rich countries have only looked after their own interests and clearly never had any attention of offering anything of real benefit to developing countries," said Adriano Campolina Soares, head of Actionaid's international campaign.

The sixth WTO ministerial meeting will be held in Hong Kong, China.

Kenya says WTO meeting collapses over Singapore issues

The 5th ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has collapsed, delegates to the meeting said here Sunday afternoon.

George Odour, a delegate of Kenya, came out of the conference hall, telling the press at 3 o'clock that the meeting collapsed over the Singapore issues.

"Singapore issues are the center of the issue," he said. "All of the developing countries are not ready for it."

Delegates from Uganda, and some other African nations also walked out of the meeting, saying the EU and some other members still wanted to launch negotiations over the Singapore issues, referring to trade and investment, trade and competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation.

But there was no immediate confirmation of the collapse from the secretariat of the WTO.

Heads of delegations began a meeting at 4 o'clock local time.

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