WTO talks collapse: What becomes of the broken-hearted?
World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy (C) leaves the Council Room at the WTO headquarters after crucial trade talks collapsed on Tuesday in Geneva. "No use beating around the bush, this meeting has collapsed. Members have simply not been able to bridge their differences," Lamy said. Photo: AFP
Nine sleepless days and nights. The press room littered with coffee cups. Countless hotel reservations cancelled and rebooked. But as talks on a new global trade pact collapsed, the WTO was still none the wiser on Wednesday what the future holds.
Chief European trade negotiator Peter Mandelson said the failure to reach a deal was "heartbreaking" and his fellow negotiators all expressed varying shades of regret at their failure to bridge their differences.
Visibly emotional immediately after the talks, Mandelson called it a "collective failure," but added: "I'm afraid that on this subject an irresistible force met an unmovable object in the negotiating room and the rest is history".
This was an apparent reference to deadlock between India and the United States on the issue of special import tariff measures to protect poor farmers which was the ultimate cause of the collapse.
His fellow EU Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel appeared to fight back the tears after saying it was "extremely difficult to find words to express the disappointment."
The previous day, the Danish commissioner for agriculture had likened the epic talks here to an "emotional rollercoaster".
Ministers had struggled for more than a week to reach consensus on subsidy levels and import tariffs for a new deal under the WTO's Doha Round, which has repeatedly foundered since its launch seven years ago.
But talks finally broke down Tuesday over measures, known as SSMs, that would have imposed a special tariff on certain agricultural goods in the event of an import surge or price fall.
The world's economic superpower, the United States, and India, one of the world's biggest emerging economies, were sharply divided over the SSM -- the special safeguard mechanism.
Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim expressed bafflement at the failure to reach a deal.
"It's unbelievable, unbelievable that we failed on one issue... I really have difficulty in understanding," he told journalists in the immediate wake of the breakdown.
The failure is a particular blow to World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy, who had been hoping to secure his legacy by finally getting all 153 member states to agree a pact after seven years of fractious wrangling.
"There is no use beating around the bush, this meeting has collapsed, members have simply not been able to bridge their differences," Lamy told journalists.
Mandelson had previously warned in his blog that failure to reach an accord would lead to the "burial" of the WTO's Doha Round -- launched in 2001 with the avowed aim of lifting millions out of poverty -- but fellow delegates were not yet ready to sound the death knell.
New Zealand's Trade Minister Phil Goff speculated that talks would resume again in some form at a later date, but conceded that upcoming elections in India and the United States would delay the timetable.
Lamy also counselled exhausted delegates to take stock of the situation before attempting to formulate any future road-maps.
"We will need to let the dust settle a bit, it's probably difficult to look too far into the future at this point," Lamy said. "WTO members will need to have a sober look at if and how they bring the pieces back together."
As talks dragged on beyond the allotted timetable, Mandelson had said delegates were entering the "endgame."
And at times, the atmosphere here has resembled the Samuel Beckett play of that name with characters talking to each other in often obtuse dialogue without ever coming to a conclusion.
"It's time it ended... and yet I hesitate, I hesitate to end," one of Beckett's characters says at one point.
Even after the past week's marathon session, Lamy and the rest of the cast here appeared to agree.
"Maybe I'm still naive," said Amorim. "I'm still someone who would believe that it would be still worth a try.”
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