The World Trade Organization was at a crossroad after the collapse of global trade talks last week, said a report carried by Monday's The Wall Street Journal.

It was far from clear that the World Trade Organization, the 149-nation organization that has been the forum for the talks, was up to the task, the report said.

Indeed, the WTO was at risk of becoming a 21st-century version of the League of Nations: a well-intentioned experiment in global governance that slides into irrelevance, it added.

"The WTO really is at a crossroads," Grant Aldonas, who was undersecretary of commerce for international trade in President Bush's first term, was quoted as saying.

He said the collapse of the Doha Round of world trade talks, unless they're revived, sets the stage for the "steady erosion of the WTO's role as the principal forum for addressing not just trade, but the broader process of globalization."

"The collapse of the Doha trade talks probably means the WTO is heading for trouble as it approaches more difficult issues, including some touchy disputes that had been kept out of its dispute-resolution mechanism in the hopes that Doha Round diplomacy would solve them," said the report.

"Perhaps the bright side of the collapse of the trade talks is that trade-dependent nations may be jolted into attention and redouble their efforts to reach a compromise," it said.

"That might be enough to save the WTO and recommit major economies to reducing trade barriers and smoothing the tensions that cast a shadow over a globalizing economy," it added.

Source: Xinhua