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WTO chief to visit China as trade talks enter crunch time
Thursday,June 14,2007 Posted: 05:56 BJT(2156 GMT)  Xinhua

GENEVA -- World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy will be in China next week to discuss issues related to the Doha Round multilateral trade talks, Lamy said on Wednesday.

"This is a normal trip as I do it once or twice a year," Lamy told Xinhua in an interview.

But as the Doha Round enters a crunch time, Lamy said he would bring a message to Chinese officials indicating that developing countries should also contribute to the trade talks so that they could be concluded in the next six to nine months.

"Obviously, all countries are preparing for a possible compromise ... and I want to make sure that as we reach this crunch time, China can both preserve its defenses and offences in the negotiations," Lamy said.

The Doha Round was launched in 2001 with an aim to boost global economy and help poor countries through fairer trade conditions. But it has missed several deadlines mainly due to sharp differences on agriculture subsidies and tariffs.

Lamy said the whole Round of talks need to be finished at the end of the year or early next year, and to do that WTO members must first reach an interim agreement on cutting agriculture subsidies, agriculture tariffs and industrial tariffs in the next few weeks.

He said the United States and Japan should move further in their offers for subsidies reduction while the EU must make more concessions on agriculture tariffs.

According to the WTO chief, developing countries should pay less than richer countries in the talks, but "they also have their contribution to bring, mainly on market access issues, including later on issues like service negotiations."

China, who joined the WTO in 2001, has stressed that specific concerns of Recently Acceded Members (RAMs) should be effectively addressed in the trade talks.

That means RAMs are entitled to have less cut and exemptions for some of their Special Products so that imbalances between the RAMs and other members could be reduced.

Lamy said "the notion that RAMs have a special problem has been recognized by everybody, and it's a question of how do you address this problem."

"This will be negotiated," he said.



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