Davos brings global trade deal 'in sight'

WTO chief Pascal Lamy said: "The landing zone is in sight," adding that he would return to Geneva to oversee fresh discussions at negotiator level and call ministers together again when enough progress has been made. But, he cautioned: "It won't be tomorrow." 

"I believe we are back in business," Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said, adding: "Either way, this is going to end in success or failure in the next two to three months." He warned: "It would be a terrible misjudgement if we allow what we have now to slip away," saying: "The alternative is not a better deal, but no deal at all." 

He reiterated that the EU is "ready to get within close reach of the average farm tariff cut demanded by G20 developing countries. And we are ready to do this in a way that demonstrably gives new market access to all exporters and all products. No loopholes." 

While British Prime Minister Tony Blair was optimistic, saying a deal was now "more likely than not", French Trade Minister Christine Lagarde played down the significance of the decision to restart talks. "We're going back to the table, period. Nothing is resolved,'' she said, reproaching Mandelson for "mistaking his desires for realities" when he mentioned the possibility of a breakthrough "in the coming weeks". 

US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said: "I emerge from these meetings with a real sense of optimism but also sense of realism about all the work ahead of us." She said that negotiators would now have to achieve a breakthrough that can convince Congress as well as US farmers that there is enough in the package for them. "It has to be more than a lowest-common-denominator deal that doesn't generate trade flows," she insisted, saying that the real debate on whether Congress would renew the President’s fast track negotiating authority would begin only once the outlines of a deal emerge. "What could be an amorphous debate about TPA would become a very focused debate about whether the United States is going to embrace a multilateral agreement that our trading partners are ready to embrace," she added. 

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said that a failure of the Doha Round would be "a very big risk" to world growth in 2007, particularly for the EU. "Intra-EU trade is going fast. Extra-EU trade is going faster. The first danger is that the current trade round would not succeed," he explained. 

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said that he was ready to get down to business immediately. "If Pascal (Lamy) wants to lock us in a room and leave us until we have the numbers, I am ready to do that today or tomorrow," he joked, adding that he thought a breakthrough would be achieved by the end of March or early April and that definitive numbers could be agreed by the end of June. 

Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohammed Rachid appeared less optimistic, saying: "This is the third Davos meeting of trade ministers in succession that has had the same talks and still nothing has happened." 

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also warned: "If we want to give a signal to the poorest countries that they will have a chance in the 21st century, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany must make concessions," adding: “We have to get them to understand, or there will be no accord." 

Aftab Alam Khan, head of ActionAid's trade campaign remains convinced that any deal will be bad for developing countries: "However the new talks are framed, poor countries will still be asked to throw open their economies in return for peanuts from the trade superpowers," he said, reiterating his call for them to "stay away from the negotiating table and resist pressure to sign up to a final deal that will only decimate jobs and exacerbate poverty".