Top trade and agriculture officials from the European Union and the United States will meet Friday in a new push to revive the deadlocked world trade talks, officials said on Wednesday.
EU trade and agriculture commissioners, Peter Mandelson and Mariann Fischer Boel, will attend the meeting, joined by their U.S. counterparts, Trade Representative Susan Schwab and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, a spokesman from the European Commission said.
The "bilateral" meeting, to be held in Brussels, is basically part of preparatory work for the ministerial talks next month in London between the EU, the United States, India and Brazil, the four major trading powers within the World Trade Organization (WTO), the spokesman added.
The London talks are a follow-up to their April meeting in New Delhi, during which the four key players, together with Japan and Australia, set the year-end as the deadline for a final deal of WTO Doha-round talks and vowed to redouble their efforts.
However, hope for any breakthrough was in doubt as Mandelson said on Tuesday that the EU would not agree to resolve the deadlock of the Doha-round talks on "any terms," alluding no big concession from the EU side.
WTO officials warned if a deal cannot be done before August, the year-end deadline will be out of reach. Several deadlines have already been failed before.
The Doha-round talks, initially launched in 2001 with the aim of alleviating poverty through fairer trade practices, came to a deadlock in July 2006 due to sharp differences among major WTO members on agricultural trade and industrial market access.