Fresh ideas are circulating in renewed World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks on farming tariffs and subsidies, two of the biggest roadblocks to a new accord on boosting global trade flows, says the talks chairman.
New Zealand Ambassador Crawford Falconer, who chairs the WTO's agriculture negotiations, told journalists inGeneva he was satisfied with the pace and tone of negotiations that restarted last week after a month-long break. While stressing new proposals had been discussed in a variety of informal groups, Falconer said the talks needed to start delivering in the coming weeks for the WTO's Doha accord to be wrapped up in a timely way.
The Doha round, named after the Qatari capital where it was launched in 2001, has struggled to overcome countries' reticence to cutting politically sensitive farming subsidies and tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has repeatedly urged countries to wrap up the talks by the end of this year to avoid having them run into the US presidential election year, when Washington is expected to have little flexibility to negotiate.
He said in an interview in Peru on Thursday that it should be possible to reach "the essential skeleton" of a Doha deal by the end of the year.
Talks on industrial goods, another hotly contested area of the Doha talks, are due to resume in part this week.
Diplomats have said agreement is relatively closer on agriculture, which is why those talks resumed first in the hope of clinching a deal and gaining some momentum in the broader talks.
