Lamy in Washington as world trade talks slumber

Washington, Nov 3: Comatose world trade talks showed a possible sign of brain activity as World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy arrived in Washington to meet with US officials.

Experts said Lamy could be gathering material for a possible draft plan to try to get the talks started again, although the visit was billed as a low-key opportunity for Lamy to meet with top Bush administration officials on the heels of meetings and speeches in New York and Boston this week.

''This may be laying the groundwork for what may be the only hope to save the round in the near term, and that is some kind of breakthrough proposal from Lamy himself,'' said Dan Griswold, a trade scholar at the Cato Institute.

He was expected to meet with U S Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday and with Trade Representative Susan Schwab and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns today.

However, spokesmen and women for those agencies would not give exact times in an apparent effort to discourage reporters from turning up to ask Lamy questions as he leaves. Lamy will return to New York to run in that city's marathon on Sunday.

The world trade talks, which will be five years old this month, were put on hold in July after participants failed again to agree on formulas for cutting trade-distorting farm subsidies and tariffs.

The impasse in agriculture has blocked progress in other areas of the talks, including industrial goods and services ranging from banking to telecommunications.

A Way Forward

Lamy producing a compromise text to be the basis for further talks might be the only way forward, Griswold said.

When a previous round of world trade talks was stuck in 1991, the late Arthur Dunkel, then director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, put together a draft text that ultimately become the basis for a deal.

''Maybe that's what's required here. I hear more and more people talking about that as a possibility,'' Griswold said.

Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, wrote recently that Lamy should invite WTO members back to Geneva in early 2007 for intensive negotiations on agriculture, industrial goods and services.

''That would be the time as well for him to unveil a new 'Lamy Draft' ... that provides specific guidance to WTO member countries on crafting the final Doha Round package of agreements,'' Schott wrote in October.

Sherman Katz, a trade expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Lamy should encourage the United States and European Union to narrow their differences on agriculture and use that as a partial text to encourage Brazil, India and others to move.

Lamy's job may be easier after the November 7 U S congressional elections, when the Bush administration could feel freer to make changes in its negotiating posture.

''Part of the coma (that has enveloped world trade talks) is induced by the political calendar. November 7 might administer a little shock therapy,'' Katz said.

Reuters