ID :
14076
Mon, 07/28/2008 - 10:44
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Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/14076
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Bush-Singh phone talk salvaged WTO trade talks: report
London, Jul 28 (PTI) - India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may have helped George W. Bush salvage his legacy as US President by brokering a breakthrough in the nerve-wracking talks at the Doha Round of world trade negotiations, a Britishnewspaper reported Sunday.
"Might it go down as the telephone call that helped to salvage George W. Bush's legacy as President of the United States? Late on Thursday evening... the President placed aprivate telephone call to Manmohan Singh..," it noted.
The Bush-Singh conversation was supposed to have been about the Indo-US nuclear power deal. However, another itemswiftly replaced this on the agenda.
"One telephone call became three over the course of the next 48 hours with strictly one topic under discussion:trade," the Sunday Telegraph reported.
During their talks, Bush and Singh "discussed the importance of all leading WTO Members making contributions to a breakthrough that will put the Doha Round negotiations on a path to conclude an ambitious agreement before the end of the year," US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroehad said in a statement on July 24.
A few thousand miles away in Geneva, key talks on liberalising world trade were nearing complete collapse. Some representatives were already making provisional plans to fly out of the Swiss city, with the World Trade Organisation's Doha Round finally thought to be heading for a "ritualburial", the paper noted.
The White House is looking forward to concluding the Doha Round by the end of this year so that Bush, who is expected to demit office on January 20 can claim credit for the importantbreakthrough in global trade.
The trade talks - aimed at removing tariffs in both rich and poor countries- had broken down a number of times before in their seven-year history, but never before had they been within a hair's breadth of what even Pascal Lamy, the WTOchief, described as absolute failure.
Failure would rule out the prospect of reigniting the talks for years; it would pave the way for greater protectionism and potentially greater global geopolitical insecurity as countries threaten to use tariffs as an economicweapon against each other.
At the very heart of the chaos was the Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath who along with his Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorim had refused to remove the barriers for western industries until the rich nations get rid of theiragricultural subsidies.
The situation seemed intractable with Kamal Nath, in his opening statement to other negotiators attacking the "utterly self-rightous" position or rich nations in seeking to deny poor countries the right to safeguard the livelihoods of theirfarmers while enjoying similar protection for themselves.
"If it means no deal, so be it," he argued.
But overnight, in the hours that followed the first phone call on late Thursday from Bush to Singh, something changed,the newspaper said.
India and Brazil started to negotiate. Lamy seized the opportunity taking the "nuclear option" for the talks and drafted a short one-page document setting out the key proposals and the deadline for the meetings was pushed back from Saturday to Wednesday. PTI
"Might it go down as the telephone call that helped to salvage George W. Bush's legacy as President of the United States? Late on Thursday evening... the President placed aprivate telephone call to Manmohan Singh..," it noted.
The Bush-Singh conversation was supposed to have been about the Indo-US nuclear power deal. However, another itemswiftly replaced this on the agenda.
"One telephone call became three over the course of the next 48 hours with strictly one topic under discussion:trade," the Sunday Telegraph reported.
During their talks, Bush and Singh "discussed the importance of all leading WTO Members making contributions to a breakthrough that will put the Doha Round negotiations on a path to conclude an ambitious agreement before the end of the year," US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroehad said in a statement on July 24.
A few thousand miles away in Geneva, key talks on liberalising world trade were nearing complete collapse. Some representatives were already making provisional plans to fly out of the Swiss city, with the World Trade Organisation's Doha Round finally thought to be heading for a "ritualburial", the paper noted.
The White House is looking forward to concluding the Doha Round by the end of this year so that Bush, who is expected to demit office on January 20 can claim credit for the importantbreakthrough in global trade.
The trade talks - aimed at removing tariffs in both rich and poor countries- had broken down a number of times before in their seven-year history, but never before had they been within a hair's breadth of what even Pascal Lamy, the WTOchief, described as absolute failure.
Failure would rule out the prospect of reigniting the talks for years; it would pave the way for greater protectionism and potentially greater global geopolitical insecurity as countries threaten to use tariffs as an economicweapon against each other.
At the very heart of the chaos was the Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath who along with his Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorim had refused to remove the barriers for western industries until the rich nations get rid of theiragricultural subsidies.
The situation seemed intractable with Kamal Nath, in his opening statement to other negotiators attacking the "utterly self-rightous" position or rich nations in seeking to deny poor countries the right to safeguard the livelihoods of theirfarmers while enjoying similar protection for themselves.
"If it means no deal, so be it," he argued.
But overnight, in the hours that followed the first phone call on late Thursday from Bush to Singh, something changed,the newspaper said.
India and Brazil started to negotiate. Lamy seized the opportunity taking the "nuclear option" for the talks and drafted a short one-page document setting out the key proposals and the deadline for the meetings was pushed back from Saturday to Wednesday. PTI
