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Argentina's Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana Dec. 21 said insufficient progress on farm trade liberalization at the latest round of World Trade Organization talks held in Hong Kong bode badly for the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas

Trade ministers at the World Trade Organization's Dec. 13-18 ministerial meeting in Hong Kong agreed to set a new deadline for completing the Doha Round of trade talks by the end of 2006, but many observers are skeptical that the negotiations, which are stalled in several areas, can be completed by then.

The Hong Kong ministerial declaration approved late yesterday by 150 World Trade Organization delegates gathered here for the sixth ministerial meeting set 2013 as the date for eliminating all agricultural export subsidies an agreement that came after hours of wrangling as well as threats of walk-outs from some trade ministers

Last week's sixth World Trade Organization ministerial conference which brought about '5 percent progress' in the languishing Doha Development Agenda trade negotiations, according to Director General Pascal Lamy has preserved the 'process' more than adding to the substance of the four-year-old negotiations

This is a report of the four press conferences that were held after the closing session of the WTO

In contrast to statements by several governments who hailed the WTO

The sixth Ministerial conference of the WTO ended on Sunday with the adoption of a Ministerial Declaration in a carefully choreographed closing session designed in a way to prevent delegations from speaking or taking an active role in decision-making

press statement: Anti-WTO activists present at the December 17 standoff with the Hong Kong police outside the HKCEC denounce the heavy-handed tactics used to disperse an assembly of unarmed protesters

The United States went as far as it could in last week's World Trade Organization ministerial meeting and it is now time for the European Union to 'step up' and propose a more ambitious agricultural market access offer in the Doha Development Agenda

The deal patched together at the World Trade Organisation Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong at the weekend is widely seen as a face saving exercise designed to save the talks from collapse. And there is doubt that the many remaining areas of disagreement can be sorted out by the target date of the end of next year.