WTO

Mission Unaccomplished

The ministerial meeting of the global trade body ended in fiasco

-BY A CORRESPONDENT

The protestors assembled in Seattle, must have toasted cheers as the World Trade Organization failed to thrash out any decision in its latest ministerial meeting in the  USA.

In the eleventh hour of the concluding day of the four-day ministerial meeting it was announced that the meeting could not take any decisions on the stipulated new round of negotiations in the new millennium. 

Speaking during the last plenary session, Charlene Brashefsky, Chairperson of the WTO and US Trade Representative, said that no decisions could be reached due to the complex, diverse and often noble issues.

"The WTO Director General has been directed to look for ways to expedite the process of making the multilateral trading organization a more transparent institution and consult with all member countries to hammer out a creative way to bridge the area of difference," said the Chairperson.

"Despite the failure of the Seattle talks, WTO members would commence negotiations on agriculture and services from January as a part of WTO's build-in agenda."

Meantime, representatives from the developing world have lashed out at the backroom dealmaking in the WTO. They have also claimed that such deals have put big powers like the United States and Europe in control of all agreements being drafted at the WTO ministerial conference.

"We are now totally marginalised from a process hijacked by the wealthier nations," Clement Rohee, Trade Minister for the Caribbean State of Guyana, was quoted as saying by AFP last week.  

He denounced the so-called "green room" system under which chairmen of the conference's working groups invited selected countries to an exclusive negotiating session after open discussions.

Heavyweight trading powers are working overtime drafting and re-drafting proposals in such green room sessions, but delegates from poorer countries expressed frustration that they had no access to the decisive proceedings, the international news agency reported.

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