News Brief

WTO heading for slow suicide, says church agency

-19/12/05

The World Trade Organization has again failed to deliver any real progress on international trade or development, says one of Britain's leading church development organizations.

Of the latest draft text to emerge yesterday (Sunday), a Christian Aid representative said: 'it has not made any significant impression on world trade rules in favour of poor countries.'

The European Union's refusal to budge on domestic subsidies, while demanding huge market access to developing countries' services, has proved the main stumbling block.

This in spite of assurances from EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson that 'things are heading in the right direction'.

Speaking on Channel 4 TV News (UK), the one-time New Labour fixer acknowledged the slowness of the process, and conceded that the current trade round was still on a knife-edge. But he said that where there was will, there was a way and blamed the US for being insufficiently flexible.

But some in the NGO community took a less patient approach.

'The extraordinary intransigence of rich countries is making the WTO an increasingly irrelevant organization,' said Claire Melamed, Christian Aid's head of trade policy.

She went on: 'Cancun crashed and now Hong Kong is failing because of the European Union's arrogance. We could be witnessing the slowest suicide note in history as the WTO's importance withers on the vine of international greed.'

[Also on Ekklesia: Anger spills over at WTO in Hong Kong 18/12/05; Trade justice hangs in the balance 17/12/05; Poor countries unhappy at British trade talks tactics 17/1/05; World Trade deal only worth one cent a day says Christian Aid; Christian Aid laments receding trade talk hopes; Christian Aid warns of trade talks walk-out after leak; Thousands call for just global trade in mass lobby of Parliament; Christian Aid says European Union is bullying the global poor; Santa tells Tony Blair to Make Poverty History; Chancellor warns Christians that global justice will take a long haul; UK chancellor to address Christians in run up to WTO talks]