Beneath their pledge to speed up global trade talks over the weekend, a core group of World Trade Organisation member states betrayed unease about troubled attempts to break down more trade barriers mainly for poor countries. "This was the kick-start to the political process necessary to put negotiations on the right track," said Swiss Economy Minister Joseph Deiss late Saturday after a meeting of ministers from 25 countries or blocs including the European Union.
The informal meeting of a limited number of members of the 148-nation WTO on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum was aimed at mapping out the course for a full ministerial meeting at Hong Kong in December, Ministers must enter Hong Kong with "concrete progress" on the five areas where the stuttering round of talks are meant to cut down trade barriers, if they want to help developing countries gain a more lucrative place in global trade, officials said.
The areas include modalities for free trade in agriculture and industrial goods, and a "critical mass" of progress on services and trade facilitation, Deiss said in a statement summarising the outcome. "These are in my view, necessary conditions to secure a timely and balanced final result in 2006," the Swiss minister, who chaired the meeting, told journalists in the Swiss town of Davos.
Political leaders reiterated as the forum closed Sunday that completion of a new round of trade liberalisation was a vital building block in efforts to boost aid for poor countries before the end of 2005, adding to the pressure on trade ministers.
While the ministers emerging from the WTO meeting said there was broad agreement on the need for success in Hong Kong, a spokesman for the organisation emphasised that they did not deal with substance.
The round of talks on new liberalisation - notably in agriculture - was launched in Doha, Qatar, in 2001 with the avowed aim of helping poor countries compete on more equal terms on world markets.
But the talks have been riven by disagreements, notably between rich and poor countries over farming subsidies in the EU and the United States. That culminated in the collapse of a ministerial meeting in Cancun in 2003 which had similar ambitions to the ones being displayed for Hong Kong.
Although negotiations were wrenched back on track last summer, WTO member states agreed to postpone the original deadline for completion of the Doha round at the end of 2004 and they have since edged ahead on a technical level.
Brazil was one of 11 members of the G20 group of developing countries in Davos.
By contrast European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson insisted on a "balanced" approach to all five of the areas still up for negotiation.
"Time is short, the distance is long," he said, also signalling that there were outstanding disagreements with the G20.
"We're waiting for them like everyone else. I detected that there was commitment among those here," he said.
The outcome of the Davos encounter will be discussed by representatives of the full membership at a Trade Negotiation Committee meeting at WTO headquarters in Geneva on February 14.
"It was important that we start out 2005 with some momentum," US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick explained.
Other milestones include another informal mini-ministerial in Kenya in early March and a meeting of the G20 group of developing countries later that month.