The two leaders of the world's powerful nations met recently in an attempt to restart the Doha round of global trade meeting. United Kingdom Leader Tony Blair and United States President George W. Bush had a closed door meeting in Washington last July 28 to see if they can revive the stalled talks that started five years ago in Doha. Blair revealed in an interview that both leaders have decided to take into action their one final endeavor to rejuvenate the global trade talks.



The World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting held in Geneva last July 24 was designed for global trade leaders from various countries to meet and settle the problems regarding poverty and flunking economies of the third world countries. The WTO is a worldwide body whose aim is to promote free trade by persuading countries to abolish import tariffs and other barriers.

But the meeting failed to reach a solid decision when the trade leaders failed to settle their clashes over agricultural subsidies and tariffs, hindering endeavors to achieve a global market-opening agreement. During the aftermath of the global trade negotiation, the European Union (EU) and the US were throwing counter charges over who to accuse about the meeting's failure. On one hand, US blamed the EU for its failure to fulfill its pledges in opening its markets. On the other hand, EU accused the US for inflexibility and for its declension to give ground over farm subsidies. India and EU said that the US had asked a high cost for cutting almost $US20 billion that the country uses on agricultural subsidies yearly. Meanwhile, US said that India and EU were not prepared to give other nations admission to their economy and markets.

Blair said that he hasn't given up about the WTO global trade round yet. The British leader is still a strong advocate of the WTO negotiations that will possibly help alleviate poverty in poor countries. His spokesman also said that Blair will be speaking with the trade leaders who were present in the wordwide conference.

Celso Amorim, Brazillian Prime Minister and Susan Schwab, US Trade Representative have been meeting in Rio De Janeiro to see if they can unfreeze the stalled talks within eight months. Schwab said that both the US and Brazil are main members of the WTO and they hope to lead the effort of reviving the Doha round. She also said that the meeting between the two countries is their first step in their plan to restart the WTO meeting. Both trade leaders were hoping to get a solid agreement over global trade to minimize farm subsidies and open the worldwide market to other countries. She added that trade leaders from other members of the WTO will hopefully support them.

Other countries like Australia already expressed its interest in restarting the global trade meeting, but it hasn't given a definite schedule as to when it would push through again. A newspaper in the said country revealed that Australia will look for a way to restart the free global trade negotiations in a meeting that is scheduled in September. Several countries were invited to the September meeting.