Brussels, 11/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - Commissioners Peter Mandelson (trade) and Mariann Fischer Boel (agriculture) will take place this week in a “mini-ministerial” of the WTO in Dalian, China. 32 WTO countries will take part in the meeting which will cover all aspects of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA): agriculture, market access for industrial products, market access for services, trade facilitation measures, development objectives. Drawing on the results of the G8 Summit, which underlined the importance of an “ambitious result” in negotiations on the Doha cycle negotiations, the two Commissioners declared in a press release on Monday that it was now “imperative” that all WTO countries translated their political will into real progress in negotiations. Mandelson declared that, “in Dalian we need to take a step closer to a comprehensive deal that balances agricultural reform with new market access in services and manufactured goods and a new focus on the special needs of developing countries”. Fischer Boel said that, “the decisive WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong is getting closer and we need to keep up the momentum in all areas of the talks on agriculture if we are to achieve a meaningful agreement in December”. WTO negotiator for agriculture, Tim Groser, also called for the Dalian meeting to lead to two main guidelines for agreement on market access for agricultural products. Last week he informed AFP that he wanted to see ministers at Dalian provide the fundamental architecture for an agreement ton market access for agricultural products. Participating countries at Dalian are: South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, USA, Hong-Kong, China, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New-Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Singapore, EU, Switzerland, Thailand, Zambia.
On Friday the director general of the WTO, Supachai Panitchpakdi, thought that negotiations on the Doha Cycle were experiencing difficult. He told representatives from member countries that the crisis threatening them was even more dangerous as it did not involve dramatic divergences but rather inertia.