Status of WTO negotiations, Portman criticizes Lamy WTO Negotiators Seek to Rescue Global Accord With New Deadline

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- World Trade Organization negotiators are seeking to rescue a global accord by setting a six-week timetable to cut import duties on commodities and industrial goods ranging from corn and computers to cars.

Admitting the WTO's 149 governments would miss their April 30 deadline to work out how to pare farm subsidies and import tariffs, the organization's head, Pascal Lamy, said last week that leaving an accord until July 'would guarantee failure.'

Trade ministers including U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and India's Kamal Nath, known as the Group of Four, or 'G4,' failed to reach a breakthrough in meetings in Paris, London and Rio de Janeiro in recent months.

'It might be useful to do something with a little less political glare on it,' said John Weekes, a former Canadian ambassador to the WTO who is now trade adviser with law firm Sidley Austin Brown & Wood in Geneva. 'This is Lamy backing away from the G-This and the G-That to produce miracles, and returning to a more tested approach.'

Negotiators are struggling to seal a deal this year that would leave enough time for the U.S. Congress to approve a final agreement before the Bush administration's negotiating mandate expires in July 2007. Portman last week said trade ministers should meet at the WTO 'as soon as possible,' calling Lamy's decision not to hold such a meeting in April a 'mistake.'

Geneva Visit

Portman, chosen by U.S. President George W. Bush to head the White House budget office, arrives in Geneva today for a three- day visit. His counterparts from Japan and Australia, as well as Brazil's Amorim, will also be in town to spur the talks.

Negotiators meeting in Geneva last month 'seemed to be at risk of going backward,' Don Stephenson, who leads the talks on machinery and consumer goods, said in a 20-page report presented to the meeting of WTO ambassadors today. 'On the core issues, which will define the level of ambition' of the talks, 'no movement can be reported,' his report says.

The WTO's biggest members -- the European Union, the U.S., Brazil and India -- have made progress conditional on one another making further concessions to break the deadlock in the talks, now in their fifth year. The discussions were originally due to be concluded by the end of 2004.

'One thing people will have to do in the next six weeks is decide 'Is the deal in prospect better than no deal?'' Weekes said.