Former GATT chairman calls for new Doha deadline

Former world trade chief Alan Oxley Tuesday called on trade negotiators to set a new and more realistic deadline for the Doha-Round trade talks.

Putting the Doha round on ice now does no damage to the WTO's system of global trade rules, said Oxley, former chairman of the WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

"Without an agreement on a new deadline, restarting the negotiations will itself become an issue," he said in a statement.

He added that there would now inevitably be a period of reflection about whether to continue with the negotiations which were suspended on Monday after senior officials from the six key trading parties (Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States) failed to overcome their differences during last-ditch meetings in Geneva on Sunday and Monday.

Oxley attributed principal responsibility for the failure to the EU.

"If the EU would not cut (farm subsidies), no U.S. administration could secure support from Congress to a trade deal in the WTO," he said.

Oxley, who is also chairman of Pro-globalization NGO World Growth, said that the capacity of WTO's multilateral rules to support free trade remained unchanged.

Source: Xinhua