Geneva – World Trade Organization members called a halt to more than five years of commerce liberalization talks Monday as differences over farm aid proved unbridgeable.
Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO, said a deal billed as a recipe for lifting millions of people worldwide out of poverty would not be reached by the end of the year and that there was no new timetable for completing the round.
“We are in dire straits,” Lamy said after six of the WTO’s most powerful members failed to agree on steps toward liberalizing trade in farm and manufactured goods. He said he did not intend to propose any new deadlines or a date for negotiators to resume meeting.
The 25-nation European Union criticized U.S. intransigence over agricultural subsidies for the breakdown, while the United States blamed Brazil and India for being inflexible on cutting barriers to industrial imports and the EU for refusing to make deeper cuts in its farm import tariffs.
Last week, presidents and prime ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries called a new trade deal a top priority. But that promise did not translate into real negotiating action during two days of meetings facilitated by Lamy between Australia, Brazil, the EU, India, Japan and the U.S.
