Efforts being made to resume Doha talks : PM

New Delhi, Oct 15 (UNI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said every effort was being made to resume the stalled Doha Round of talks and it had been agreed to send a message to the world to resume the dialogue process.

The Prime Minister who was addressing a joint press conference alongwith the Presidents of Brazil and South Africa after the third Summit meeting of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialoue Forum, said the WTO had not moved as fast and had reached an impasse because of certain issues concerning developing countries.

These include agriculture, those concerning marginal farmers, Intellectual Property Rights, services and other issues.

''Every effort was being made to resume the dialogue process and it had been agreed to make efforts to send a message to the world to resume the dialogue process,'' the Prime Minister said in reply to a question.

A joint declaration issued after the Summit said the three leaders acknowledged that while substantial progress was made during the informal ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in July this year, the final modalities in agriculture and NAMA could not be achieved.

They agreed that there must be a concerted effort by all member countries to take the process forward towards a successful conclusion of the Round.

They also emphasised the importance of concluding the Round to achieve its development objectives, which had assumed even greater significance in the wake of the global financial and food crises.

The leaders welcomed the resumption of the multilateral process in the WTO and expressed the hope that this would lead to the early finalisation of modalities in agriculture and NAMA.

They also expressed the hope that multilateral discussions would resume in other areas of the negotiations as well, particularly issues of concern to developing countries.

The leaders reiterated the importance of the development objectives of the Doha Round and observed that many of the issues, which either remained unresolved or could not be addressed at all during the July informal ministerial engagement, were issues critical to developing countries.

They called upon developed country members to demonstrate greater flexibility to address the development concerns so that members could collectively achieve a positive and development oriented outcome in the Doha Round.

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