World Trade Organization (WTO) members must seize the chance to unlock
stalled trade negotiations at a meeting beginning Thursday in Dalian, China,
international organization Oxfam said here Wednesday.
It said the WTO
Mini-Ministerial in Dalian, China (July 12-13) is particularly crucial given the
lack of progress in Geneva and last week`s failure of the G8 to make firm
commitments on trade reforms designed specifically to help poor
countries.
Oxfam is a development, relief, and campaigning organization
that works with others to find lasting solutions to poverty and suffering around
the world.
It said with less than six months to go before the WTO
Ministerial in Hong Kong, negotiators of WTO trade talks are miles from
consensus and have failed even to produce draft texts for discussion.
In
Scotland last week G8 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to completing the Doha
round, but they failed to set an end date for export subsidies or to agree any
other concrete targets.
"The G8 missed the opportunity to give stalled
world trade talks the boost they badly need," said Oxfam.
"Rich countries
must stop asking `what can I get from this` and start asking `how can we make
progress that helps everyone?`"
Negotiators of WTO trade talks have been
haggling over agreements on most of the issues on the table, including on food
aid, cotton, a formula for tariff cuts and level of reduction of agricultural
subsidies.
Oxfam noted that to ensure success in Hong Kong at the end of
the year, when members are meant to agree a final deal on new rules,negotiators
need to agree now on draft texts and begin to fill in the details.
"If
things are left until the Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, the agenda will be
impossibly overloaded and talks will most likely collapse," said Oxfam.
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