On Friday 21 October 2005, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy met informally with members of the ICC Chairmanship at ICC’s international headquarters in Paris. Present at the meeting were ICC Vice Chairman Marcus Wallenberg, ICC Honorary Chairman Jean-Ren
é Fourtou and ICC Secretary General Guy Sebban.
During the one-hour meeting, the WTO Director-General and the members of the ICC Chairmanship had the opportunity to exchange views on the latest developments in the Doha round negotiations.
Developments over the coming weeks between now and the WTO’s 6th Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong (13-18 December 2005) will be crucial in securing the advances necessary to instil a positive dynamic to the negotiations and to establish a sufficient level of consensus among WTO members to ensure a successful outcome of the Hong Kong conference.
At this stage, agriculture continues to be the political lynchpin of the negotiations, requiring further movement by key WTO members, to enable this element of the agenda to move forward, and thereby unlocking the potential for progress in other areas that still need considerable technical work.
Time is running short, as substantive preparations for the Hong Kong Ministerial will need to be completed over the coming weeks in order to lay the ground sufficiently in advance if broad agreement is to be achieved at ministerial level in Hong Kong.