Brussels, 17/07/2006 (Agence Europe) - The members of the G8 (Germany, Canada, USA, France, Italy, Japan, UK and Russia), meeting in St Petersburg from 15 to 17 July and disappointed with the failure of the ministerial meeting in Geneva on 1 July (EUROPE 9224) nonetheless welcomed the “decision to ask the WTO Director General Pascal Lamy to consult members intensively in order to promote early agreement” on the means of liberalising trade in agriculture and manufactured goods “within a month”. “We call for a concerted effort to conclude the negotiations of the WTO's Doha Development Agenda (DDA)”, says the declaration, which notes that the Agenda “should deliver real cuts in tariffs, effective cuts in subsidies and real new trade flows”. (Russia is not a member of the WTO, and the declaration underlines the support of the G7 for its rapid accession). The signatories commit to “substantial improvements in market access for trade in both agricultural and industrial products and to expanding opportunities for trade in services”. “We look to other WTO Members to contribute to this objective, commensurate with their level of development”, the participants at the meeting add, ahead of a meeting on Monday in the margins of the St Petersburg summit, with the large emerging countries of the G-20 (South Africa, Brazil, China, India, and Mexico). In agricultural terms, the declaration commits to “substantially reducing trade-distorting domestic support and to the parallel elimination by the end of 2013 of all forms of export”. For the other aspects of the round, it stresses the importance of improving the facilitation of trade and its rules. Finally, on the “development” aspects of the round, it welcomes the adoption in Hong Kong in December 2005 of the “development package” whereby rich countries and developing countries which are "capable of it” are committed to giving access to the market without duties or quotas for at least 97% of the products to all LDCs by 2008. Additionally, underlining the importance of aid to trade in facilitating the insertion of developing countries into world trade flows, the most industrialised powers reaffirm their commitment on that front and in favour of strengthening the commercial capacities of poor countries, and state that they “expect to spend 4 billion dollars for aid to trade”, although they did not specify any time-frame.