Little progress in WTO agri talks
By Jet Hermida on Mar 10, 2008 in Agriculture and Globalization, News Clippings
Third World Network
By Kanaga Raja, Geneva, 3 Mar 2008
Following two weeks of small-group talks that produced little results, the agriculture negotiations at the WTO will be taking a pause this week. Members can use this time to discuss issues among themselves before the full membership meets again on 10 March to assess the situation and decide how to proceed from there. This was announced at an informal meeting of the Special Session of the Agriculture Committee on Friday (29 February) where the Chair of the negotiations, Ambassador Crawford Falconer of New Zealand, reported to the full membership on his “Room E” consultations (among some 37 representative delegations) which took place on 25-29 February.
It was obvious from the Chair’s statement to the meeting, and from comments he made to journalists after the meeting, that there has been very little progress in the last fortnight’s Room E talks, and that Falconer is finding it difficult to have anything new to enable him to draft a new revised text before the “horizontal process”, which is rumoured to start in the week of 17 March.
“It’s virtually inconceivable that I’ll have a revised text (at the 10 March meeting),” he told the meeting.
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