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After the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva today (24 July), ActionAid looks at the future of the global trading system.

Hopes were fading on Tuesday of keeping alive a global free trade deal after trading powers failed to make a breakthrough at a marathon first session, diplomats said.

Civil society organizations from Brazil and from around the world are celebrating the collapse of negotiations towards the conclusion of the Doha Round of the WTO.

"Flexibilities" was the new key theme and indeed the key word after a short meeting of the G6 Ministers held at the WTO on Monday (17 July) night, to follow up on the lunch meeting at St Petersburg a few hours earlier that the G8 leaders had with the leaders of five developing countries.

No one who was not there seems to know what actually happened at the G8 Summit leaders' meeting with the leaders of five developing countries in the lunchtime "outreach working lunch" at St Petersburg on Monday (17 July).

Fresh from his discussions at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh provided a cautiously optimistic insight into the prospects of the deadlocked WTO negotiations.

World leaders

Leaders of the Group of Eight major industrial countries on Sunday recommended a two-week extension for a deadline aimed at breaking the impasse over long-stalled global trade negotiations.

Group of Eight leaders met key developing countries on Monday to give a push to world trade talks at a big-power summit strained by divisions over the Middle East.

Trade ministers from the U.S. and five other World Trade Organization members have agreed at a meeting today (July 17) to gather again twice this month in Geneva in an effort to push the struggling WTO talks forward.