WTO ministers to confront faltering Doha

Luzius Wasescha, Swiss ambassador to the World Trade Organisation, likes to recall how negotiators once met for three weeks in the 1950s to haggle over tariffs on hats.

By the time they had finally agreed to open trade in headgear, men's hats were no longer fashionable.

With the WTO's Doha round- already the longest-running set of trade negotiations - limping into its ninth year, the anecdote sums up the difficulty, if not futility, of trying to reach new deals to open trade in an ever more complex world.

Perhaps it is for that reason that negotiations on Doha, launched in November 2001 to open markets and help poor countries prosper through trade, will not be on the agenda when ministers from the WTO's 153 members gather in Geneva on November 30 for a delayed conference to take stock of the body and its work.

But for all the formal discussions on the future role of the WTO, Doha is likely to dominate the three-day meeting, with most members wanting to see whether President Barack Obama's administration is ready to get actively involved in the talks.

"Like it or not, the whole world is looking to the US to bail out the negotiations," former US ambassador to the WTO Peter Allgeier, whose nominated successor Michael Punke has not yet been confirmed by the US Senate, said on November 19.

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