Real Doha trade talks must start now: US

Trading powers must get down to real negotiations right away if there is to be any hope of concluding the long-running Doha talks to open up global commerce this year, a top US negotiator said on Thursday. To reach a deal, said the US ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Michael Punke, big emerging countries like China, Brazil and India should accept that their booming economies meant they must open up their markets more.
WTO members have drawn up a programme of intensive talks for the next few weeks, after leaders of the G20 rich and emerging economies called for the Doha round to be finished and said 2011 was a window of opportunity. Punke said the complex negotiations would require so much detailed work that a deal could not be done unless the real give and take of bargaining over substantive issues starts now. "For 2011 to be a window of opportunity we have to all be negotiating effective immediately. That's the logistical reality of the Doha negotiations," he told a briefing. "There's an awful lot of work to be done."
Talks next week on agriculture and industrial goods - the core issues in the Doha talks launched nine years ago - would show whether Washington's partners were really willing to deal, he said. A meeting of key ministers at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos at the end of this month would not yield a substantive breakthrough but would allow countries to signal whether they were serious about the talks, he said.
Punke said recent contacts with China had been disappointing as they had not gone into the detailed negotiations the United States had looked for, while India was sending mixed signals. Recent tariff increases by Brazil were a "stick in the eye" for its trading partners and made the Doha talks harder. Punke said the United States accepted it would have to make further concessions in negotiations but the central question was whether the emerging economies were ready to accept the role that he said came with their position in the global economy.