GENEVA: Just three weeks into the job, new World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Roberto Azevedo hinted yesterday at the beginning of a more dynamic era for the body long hampered by deadlocked global trade talks. “I see that there is a different mood at the WTO today. The dynamic is different,” said Azevedo, a Brazilian career diplomat who took the reins of the global trade organisation from Frenchman Pascal Lamy on September 1.
An energy boost will surely be needed as the organisation that sets the rules for global commerce strives to reach consensus on a long range of issues ahead of a summit in Bali in December.
The summit is seen as perhaps the last chance to revive the so-called “Doha Round” of talks, launched in 2001 to craft a global accord on opening markets and removing trade barriers.
Differences over the give and take needed have fuelled clashes notably between China, the European Union, India and the United States, and left the talks stalled for years, leading many countries to shift focus to bilateral and regional deals.
The Bali conference “is a priority for us,” Azevedo told reporters in Geneva, stressing that pre-Bali negotiations need to have made significant progress by the end of next month. With this aim in mind, the WTO was hosting “meetings with business-like objectives, they start on time, and the interventions are limited to 60 seconds,” he said. Azevedo stressed that he was not only very insistent that country ambassadors to the WTO attended meetings, but that he was making a point of personally taking part and cohosting the sessions.
His presence and the high attendance had already made it possible to unblock a number of sticky issues of contention between the WTO’s 159 member states in their negotiations leading up to Bali, he said.
His comments could be seen as an implicit criticism of his predecessor Lamy, who travelled extensively during his eight years at the helm of the WTO and rarely spent long periods of time at the organisation’s Geneva headquarters.
AFP
