Australia still seeks Doha deal in 2011

Australia still hopes for a final deal in ailing world trade talks this year, but recognises countries must change course to reach that elusive target, the country's trade minister said on Friday. "Australia still seeks the best quality outcome that can be achieved and we seek it in 2011," Australian Trade Minister Craig Emerson told reporters at the end of a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum.
The 21 Apec members, which included both the United States and China, expressed deep concern about "unbridgeable" gaps in the long-running Doha round of negotiations aimed at liberalising trade in agriculture, manufactured goods and services such as banking and express delivery.
In a joint statement, they called on their trade negotiators to work urgently with other members of the World Trade Organisation "to develop a clear and realistic plan" to salvage the talks, launched in late 2001 with the goal of helping poor countries prosper through trade. The Apec members resisted setting any sort of deadline for finishing the talks, but noted without a "major substantive breakthrough" they saw no chance of finishing in 2011 as hoped at the start of the year.
Emerson said without some kind of a deal this year he feared elections in the United States and other WTO members in 2012 would push off further negotiations until 2013 - a fate he called "tantamount to abandonment" of the talks. Australia will host a trade ministers meeting next week in Paris on the fringes of the annual meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to thrash over various ideas for concluding a deal, he said. Those range from a vastly scaled-down package focused on mainly on reducing red tape that slows down the transport of goods across borders to one that would contains at least some new market openings.
Emerson refused to say just what elements Australia, a major agricultural exporter, needed to see in a final package. "We're interested in a generally liberalising agreement and we're not interested in something that doesn't pass that test," he said.