*EPF412 01/20/00
WTO Director-General Says Trade Talks Could Resume This Year
(Moore says it will depend on the flexibility of members) (410)

Washington -- Mike Moore, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), says there is a chance of resuming ministerial-level negotiations in the WTO this year, but it will depend on the desire of the 135-member nations whether to launch a new round of trade liberalizing talks.

Moore was in Washington January 19-20 to meet with U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman as part of his efforts to get the stalled global trade negotiations back on track. He was also to meet with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York.

Glickman, who appeared with Moore January 20 at a meeting with reporters, said the WTO director-general "has a Herculean task to bring together sovereign nations with competing political and economic agendas to try to reach some consensus on modernizing and updating our world trade agreements."

While the United States is not pleased that an agreement to open new trade negotiations was not reached at the WTO meeting in Seattle, Glickman said there was some progress made on agricultural issues. "We hope that we can build on that progress in terms of the next part of the negotiating strategy," he said.

Moore said WTO ambassadors will meet February 7 at the General Counsel meeting in Geneva to discuss how to resume trade negotiations. He said he had met with European Union (EU) Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy in Brussels January 17, and with trade officials in India and Japan as well.

The Seattle WTO ministerial meeting, November 30-December 3, ended inconclusively amid disputes over agriculture, services, labor, the environment, antidumping and other issues. Nevertheless, Moore said efforts are still focusing on the "built-in" agenda contained in the 1994 Uruguay Round multilateral trade agreements that calls for negotiations on agriculture and services this year.

Additionally, December 31, 1999 marked a deadline for many developing countries to meet obligations in intellectual property (TRIPS) and investment measures (TRIMS). These deadlines will also be on the February 7 agenda.

Moore will also attend later this month the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a major gathering of global business and political leaders, where the resumption of WTO negotiations will be discussed.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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