VUE Weekly – Edmonton,Alberta,Canada
Scott Harris / [email protected]
“The collapse of the Doha Round is good for the poor,” said Walden Bello, executive director of the Thailand-based organization Focus on the Global South, in a statement released jointly by a number of groups based in developing countries.

Civil society groups are hailing the collapse of World Trade Organization talks as a victory for the world’s poor.
WTO director-general Pascal Lamy announced on Jul 24 that he would recommend to the WTO General Council that negotiations be suspended for an indefinite period following the breakdown of talks between Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States in Geneva on the weekend.
“Faced with this persistent impasse, I believe that the only course of action I can recommend is to suspend the negotiations across the Round, as a whole, to enable the serious reflection by participants, which is clearly necessary,” Lamy told the heads of the negotiation teams.
“I do not intend to propose any new deadlines or a date for resumption of activity in the Negotiating Groups. This can only come when the conditions exist to permit renewed progress, and this means changes in entrenched positions. The ball is clearly in your court,” Lamy said.
The key issue was the unwillingness of the US and the European Union, who blamed each other for the impasse, to reduce barriers to agricultural imports from the developing world.
While Lamy said that the collapse of the so-called Doha Development Round—which was launched in Doha, Qatar in 2001—would be a blow to developing countries, international civil society groups said the collapse was the best possible outcome.
“The collapse of the Doha Round is good for the poor,” said Walden Bello, executive director of the Thailand-based organization Focus on the Global South, in a statement released jointly by a number of groups based in developing countries.