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New US Trade Representative Susan Schwab crossed swords with her European Union counterpart over Brussels

Doha Development Agenda key players the United States, the European Union, Brazil, India and the Group-of-10 defensive coalition stuck tight to their positions yesterday on Doha Development Agenda agriculture and nonagricultural market access

World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy

France, Ireland, Italy and Portugal yesterday strongly opposed any move by the European Union

Within a day of starting their negotiations, ministers today (June 30) raised significant doubts about how much progress they could make on developing modalities for agriculture and non-agricultural market access this week.

Poor countries want new rules for the WTO's intellectual property agreement that would protect their biological resources and traditional knowledge

The first day of the WTO 'mini-Ministerial' turned out to be a kind of 'Waiting for America' process as delegations and media in one meeting after another waited for the United States to proclaim on whether it was willing to improve its offer to cut agricultural domestic support.

As many Ministers and senior officials arrived today in Geneva for several days of WTO meetings, speculation was still rife on how the 'Ministerial Green Room' would be run, what issues would the Director General Pascal Lamy really want to focus on (and what issues may thus be left out), and what the Ministers and officials who are not invited to the Green Room would be doing.

The Chair of the WTO's Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) Pascal Lamy, at an informal Heads of Delegation meeting Wednesday, outlined to WTO members the process, and substantive issues that are to be tackled at a 'mini-Ministerial' that begins on Friday (30 June).

Threats, deception and manipulation are among the negotiating tactics used by rich countries in the current round of trade talks reveals a new report, The Doha Deception Round: How the US and EU cheated developing countries at the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial, launched today by ActionAid.