Trade ministers from two dozen influential World Trade Organization member countries have agreed to push for a breakthrough agreement in the Doha Round negotiations by July, so that the long-struggling trade talks can be wrapped up by the end of the year. Among other things, they called for updated draft agreement texts in every area of the talks by April, an overall agreement by July, followed by the finalization of legal texts and commitment schedules by the year's end.
The ministers, from trading powers such as China, Brazil, India the United States and the European Union, as well as smaller nations such as Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Peru, echoed the view that 2011 constitutes a "window of opportunity" for concluding a Doha Round accord.
For this year's call for an agreement to succeed, WTO members will need to overcome deep differences between the U.S. and large developing countries such as China , Brazil , and India over the depth of tariff and subsidy cuts. China , India , and Brazil have consistently rejected U.S. demands for greater access to their markets as unrealistic and out of proportion to what rich nations are being asked to do to in terms of cutting tariffs and farm subsidies.
Meanwhile, a high-level panel headed by trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati and former WTO Director-General Peter Sutherland has called for making the end of 2011 an inflexible "absolute deadline" for a Doha accord, with the talks to be abandoned if governments fail to reach an agreement by then.
"The Doha Round is dying of political neglect," declared a report by the panel, which was convened by the governments of Germany , the United Kingdom , Indonesia and Turkey to come up with recommendations on boosting global trade and fighting protectionism. They argue that an explicit deadline –– to come weeks after the tenth anniversary of the round's November 2001 launch –– would "make the prospect of failure concrete, collective and unavoidable," thus forcing political leaders to seriously pursue a deal.
The panel pointed to many reasons underpinning the slow progress in the Doha Round, from changing economic beliefs and the rapid growth of countries like China, India and Brazil, to the fact that the negotiations reach far into countries' sensitive agriculture sectors.
