Press Briefing with Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Peter F. Allgeier on the Doha Development AgendaU.S. Mission to the United Nations

AMBASSADOR ALLGEIER: Thank you very much for coming today. I thought I would just say a few words about the purpose of the visit, and some reactions to it, and then allow time for questions. The purpose of the visit in addition to participating in the TNC meeting the other day, has been to work with other countries who are committed to completing the DDA successfully by the end of 2006 to make sure that the momentum that was generated by ministers when they met in Davos a few weeks ago continues sure-footedly here in Geneva.

The success of all of the membership, the 148 WTO members, will not occur through spontaneous combustion. We have to plan it. And we have to pursue our goals with determination, with continuing focus on what the targets are and also with cooperation among all of the members. And I must say that based on the meetings that we have had over the last several days, my sense is that there is a very widespread readiness among the membership to accept the challenge of completing this negotiation successfully by the end of next year. That is a starting point. We now have to translate that into our day-to-day work here in Geneva, but also back in our capitals where we have to work with our constituents, our stake-holders, our legislatures our other agencies, to bring positions to Geneva that negotiators can actually work with and bridge differences with our negotiating partners. And so this is true for all of the members. And that is a reason that on Saturday the United States hosted a meeting in this room of 30 countries with many senior officials from capitals to discuss how best to achieve our mutual goal of success by the end of next year. Just to give you a sense of the meetings this week, in addition to that senior officials meeting that I mentioned, and of course, the TNC, we held consultations with the members of the Quad, with China, with India, Brazil, we will be meeting later today with ASEAN countries. Ambassador Deily and I met yesterday with the Africa group. We met with Hong Kong who of course is going to host the next Ministerial. We had a meeting this morning with a group of small developing countries. Obviously we have met with Kenya, with Egypt, and also with the Director General and the chairs of the different negotiating groups.

So I think that we have gotten a very wide picture of the situation here and have been able to consult and hear what these different constituencies feel about moving forward. And I would just say that it is very important that the DDA succeed in order to promote economic growth and development for all our economies. One cannot succeed economically these days without being effectively integrated into the global economy. And the WTO plays a very important role in assisting our countries in doing that.

Let me just say a few words about how we see the path to success. Looking at the end of 2006 as the goal line, and thinking about what it is that we are negotiating, it will take us probably the better part of 2006 to do the final stage of negotiation. And what do I mean by that? Well, for example, in market access, everybody is going to have to negotiate their schedules for eliminating tariffs or reducing tariffs, the precise schedules for phasing out export subsidies in agriculture and for reducing the domestic supports, negotiating the changes that will be needed in our respective programs. In other areas where there aren