New global alliance sought on WTO talks

London, Nov 6 (UNI) Chancellor Gordon Brown has called for a new global alliance of governments, business leaders and public figures to break the ''dangerous global log jam'' on WTO talks that is threatening world trade.

To make his case, he will go to Brussels tomorrow to meet Finance Ministers in the European Union. Treasury Minister Ed Balls will travel to Japan to press the case with the new Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi.

Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling will go to Brazil and India to urge them to help progress by reducing tariffs and opening up their markets.

Writing in The Times the Chancellor said, ''Today I am urging progressive global business leaders and government to join forces with governments to push for a new breakthrough. Globalisation desperately needs champions, statesmen and business leaders speaking together, to challenge the current descent into protectionism.'' He issued his battle-cry amid growing concern that the opponents of globalisation are not just shouting the loudest, but are now endangering world prosperity by succeeding in pushing up barriers to free trade.

The Doha round of world trade talks collapsed in rancour in July, and many countries, particularly in Europe and Latin America, have started to pursue populist protectionist policies.

Other countries are considering doing bilateral deals between themselves instead of participating in a global deal that includes most countries.

Mr Brown, in the publication, called for ''bold and concerted action" to restart the Doha round of trade talks, urging Europe, the United States, Brazil and India to break the deadlock by making far greater concessions than they have previously over farm subsidies, industrial tariffs and access to service markets.

His call to restart trade talks is backed by the leaders of a dozen of the world's top companies, including BP, Wal-Mart, Vodafone, GlaxoSmithKline and Goldman Sachs, who insist that ''political leadership is now essential''.

In a joint letter to The Times, the industrialists, led by Chief Executive of BP Lord Browne, said that ''millions of jobs are at stake. So is the extension of international investment and the spread of knowledge, which are both vital to the success of globalisation and the fair distribution of its benefits.'' The call by Mr Brown and businessmen is timed for the American mid-term elections tomorrow, in the belief that afterwards the Bush Administration will be politically freed to sidestep the increasingly powerful protectionist lobby and restart the talks.

Mr Brown warned there is only a narrow window of opportunity for progress, since any deal must be agreed before the expiry in July of the fast-track negotiating authority granted to the US Government by Congress.

Afterwards, it could become almost politically impossible for the United States seriously to participate in any significant talks for many years, he said.

To win the argument against the protectionists, Mr Brown called for the setting up of a new ''trade exchange'', bringing together leading figures from rich and poor countries to ''expose not only the dangers of rolling backwards into unilateralism and bilateralism...but how much more the world can gain, and especially the poorest, by a globalisation that we can push forward together.'' UNI XC PKS PM1724