Lamy Says Doha Success Lies in Hands of G8 Leaders
G-8 leaders gave negotiators one month to agree on a framework for completing World Trade Organization talks.
Compiled by staff
Published: Jul 18, 2006
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy's consultations have only shown "marginal" movement in the negotiations and the responsibility now lies with leaders of the major economies to give their ministers more room to negotiate, he told the Group of Eight Summit in St. Petersburg on Monday.
Present at the meeting were leaders of the G-8 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US - and Brazil, the EU, India, China, Mexico and South Africa.
The deadlock in which we are caught will lead to failure very soon if G-8 leaders do not give their ministers further room for negotiation, Lamy claims. The differences that separate the countries at the end of negotiations are not insurmountable: a few billion trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, and that would have to be eliminated or transformed within a few years; a few billion in supplementary agricultural exports for some, and supplementary imports for the others, and a similar order of magnitude for industrial products, he continues.
G8 leaders on Sunday set a one-month deadline to get the Doha round back on track.
Lamy told the leaders the stalemate is not technical, but political. "What is at issue here is how your public opinion views these few extra percentage points in terms of benefits obtained. And quite frankly, the price you have set for these concessions is too high. We all know how politically difficult it is to change that price. We know that an added effort has a cost for you," Lamy explained to the G-8 leaders. "But I am convinced that if we are to reach a compromise, that cost will have to be accepted. What I am asking you to do, since it is ultimately up to you to decide what your parliaments vote on, is merely to weigh this cost against the cost of a failure."
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