The meeting between ministers from the EU, US, Japan, Brazil, Australia and India had been intended to break the deadlock that has held the talks almost at a standstill this year. But they said that unbridgeable divisions remained between the negotiators, particularly in the politically-charged area of agricultural trade.
The US has been urging both rich and poor countries to open their markets to agricultural exports, but many countries including the EU and India said that the US needed to reform its farm subsidies first. The failure of the weekend talks means that the round will be suspended with no near-term prospect of being restarted..
Negotiators needed to achieve a broad outline of the deal this summer to have enough time to finish them before the White House’s authority from Congress to negotiate entire trade deals expires.
The talks, launched in November 2001 in the Qatari capital, have strained from the beginning to reconcile the disparate interests of WTO members.
