WTO to focus on dispute role after Doha blow

By Jonathan Lynn - Analysis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Trade Organisation (WTO) will focus on its role resolving disputes after the latest efforts to strike a new global trade pact collapsed on Tuesday.

Ministers leaving 9 days of abortive talks seeking a breakthrough in the WTO's Doha round reaffirmed their commitment to the multilateral trading system umpired by the WTO.

But many admitted that for the time being it will be easier to seek bilateral or regional arrangements.

And many acknowledged it would be some time before the Doha negotiations -- already in their seventh year -- could be revived, even though their current offers remain on the table.

"The WTO doesn't become less relevant or important because the Doha round goes down -- the Doha round is not the WTO," said David Hartridge, a senior counselor at GLOBAL law firm White and Case.

Besides its role in trade liberalization, the WTO also helps settle trade disputes by helping governments adjust to trade tensions within an agreed legal system, Hartridge, a former acting director-general of the WTO, told Reuters.

He pointed to the long-running dispute between the United States and the European Union over passenger jets made by Boeing

and Airbus as an example of the success of the WTO in preventing trade disputes degenerating into sanctions and damaging retaliation.

LAW AND GOOD SENSE

"I see it as the great success of the system in keeping what could be a very damaging conflict between two great trading powers within the bounds of law and good sense," he said.

The collapse of the Doha talks must not be allowed to weaken the trading system represented by the WTO, said the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the most influential U.S. business lobbies.

"We must prepare ourselves for the onslaught of those pronouncing this to be the end of the WTO. That is nonsense. The WTO is the arbiter of the rules-based trading system and will continue to be the venue for future broad or specific negotiations," it said in a statement.

While the WTO continues to guide the multilateral trading system, efforts to expand that system have suffered a setback with the collapse of the Doha talks after nine days.

Countries are now likely to pursue bilateral or regional deals, easier to agree politically but with fewer economic benefits than global pacts.

And such negotiations put smaller developing countries -- the big losers from Tuesday's Doha debacle -- at a disadvantage.