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The Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services, meeting this week for the first time since the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, has been taking up some organizational matters including on how to proceed with respect to the plurilateral process.

At a meeting on services at the WTO last week, several developing countries have stressed their understanding that participation in the plurilateral mode of negotiations would be on a voluntary and non-compulsory basis.

Six of the leading players in the long-running global trade talks are to meet in London next month for what is being billed as a 'collective striptease' to unblock deadlocked negotiations through a series of mutual concessions.

A long list of questions has been distributed by the Chairperson of the agriculture negotiations for members to use during the 'agriculture week' of negotiations being held at the WTO this week.

The start of substantive discussion on the Development Agenda was delayed at a WIPO meeting on Monday due to wrangling over who would be the Chair.

The friends of ambition in Doha market access negotiation for industrial products led by the United States and the European Union on Monday submitted a set of questions to negotiations chair Don Stephenson suggesting how to finalize modalities by the end of April, WTD has learned (WTD, 2/20/06).

A DEAL on 'sensitive products' is one of the keys to unlocking progress in World Trade Organization talks on market access, Canada's lead agricultural negotiator Steve Verheul said recently.

Developing countries taking part in an UNCTAD meeting have reiterated that they are entitled to exercise flexibility when deciding on liberalisation commitments in the WTO's services agreement (GATS).

Developing countries are projected to suffer significant 'adjustment costs' as a result of reduction commitments in industrial tariffs under the Doha agenda. The costs, which will vary among different countries, include loss of output and jobs in some industrial sectors and loss of government revenue.

In the context of the current negotiations on trade facilitation, development must be the main objective and focus, said the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of developing countries in a proposal submitted to the WTO's Negotiating Group on Trade Facilitation.