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Trade breakthrough achievable in weeks: WTO head

ACCRA
Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:25pm EDT
Pascal Lamy, Director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), gestures before the opening of the WTO's General Council in Geneva February 5, 2008. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

ACCRA (Reuters) - A breakthrough in global trade talks is achievable in the next few weeks, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy said on Sunday.

Momentum in the oft-stalled trade negotiations has been building up in the past two months. Known as the Doha Round, they were launched in 2001 in a bid to boost the world economy and help developing nations export more.

"At a time when a breakthrough in these negotiations is do-able in the next weeks, we are hopeful that this conference will help to get it done," Lamy told a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Accra, Ghana.

"If we have a revised compromise text on agricultural subsidies, agricultural tariffs and industrial tariffs sorted by the end of April or the very beginning of May, I think a ministerial (meeting of WTO countries) can take place by the end of May," he said.

(Reporting by Daniel Flynn; Writing by Pascal Fletcher, editing by Ralph Boulton)


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