EU fights for Doha round

The EU will not give up on the Doha round, Brussels trade commissioner Peter Mandelson has pledged.

The EU trade chief addressed reporters on Tuesday - after WTO director general Pascal Lamy called an indefinite suspension to the round of trade negotiations due to conclude at the end of the year.

"Doha will remain a central priority of European trade policy. We will work to bring it back to life," Mandelson said.

“We need this round and we need the multilateral trading system it supports.”

He added that Brussels would push a seven point package to help developing countries regardless of any Doha delay.

“The more needy developing nations must not fall victim to this. We must extract a development package from the rubble of the talks,” he insisted.

He committed the EU to salvaging“Trade for Aid" deals, and duty-free and quote-free trade access for so-called Least-Developed Countries.

Mandelson also said that he hoped US President George Bush would seek to extend his fast-track powers to approve trade deals in the wake of Doha suspension.

"I hope (president Bush) will announce he will ... propose extension of trade promotion authority in the US as and when necessary for us to complete the round," he said.

The US president's power to approve trade deals with only a minimal role by Congress expires in mid-2007.

That has been seen as a final deadline for the WTO round.

The commissioner also said he hoped Bush would veto any moves to extend US legislation on American farm subsidies - one of the sticking points that led to the suspension of the round.

Officials in Brussels have blamed Washington for the collapse of the Doha negotiations.

While the EU had done its utmost to make the talks a success, “the US... showed no flexibility at all in the end... on the issue of domestic subsidies in agriculture,” Mandelson declared.

But NGOs argue that Brussels must also accept responsibility for Doha failure.

“The EU must look objectively at the debacle of the negotiations and realise that what it put on the table was far from delivering a genuine development deal for poor countries,” Oxfam said in a statement.

“The intransigence shown by both Europe and the US over the course of these talks is clearly the reason for their failure."

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