Although no official dares state it openly, the subtext of trade talks going on in Geneva in mid-July indicated that if the Doha free trade accord is not actually dead, there is unlikely to be any type of agreement, big or small, by December and maybe not before 2015.

 According to US trade negotiator David Stark, “members will not decide that Doha is dead at the WTO Ministerial Conference at the end of the year, but nobody should underestimate the difficulty of the remaining issues.” He made the comments at a lecture on the future of the WTO at Geneva’s Graduate Institute.

 For his part Zhu Haitao, second secretary of China’s Mission to the WTO, told the gathering that he did not expect an agreement before 2015 and blamed it on the US.  “In the US, there is a political hesitancy to engage in Doha. There needs to be a new dynamic between the US and developing countries.”

No one wants to be seen as the first to give up on the talks which could generate billions of dollars and alleviate poverty by freeing up trade in goods and services, especially in emerging countries.  The Doha Round has failed, according to analysts, because it is too difficult to get meaningful concessions from 153 countries.

Even the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Pascal Lamy, sounded more pessimistic than usual after it became clear that his compromise proposal for a ‘mini-Doha’ deal, pulling together the less contentious pieces of the main negotiations, was not going to be accepted.

Lamy also warned negotiators that the growing use of small trade pacts is a challenge to the multilateral trading system.  He said that PTAs (preferential trade agreements) “may lock their members into a particular regulatory regime reducing the potential for trade to prosper with countries outside the arrangement”.

The criticism by the consummate French diplomat is seen by many analysts as an indication of how worried the WTO is about what will happen to it if the Doha round fails at a time when the global economy is in a slump and many nations are viewing big global trading agreements in a less favorable light.

“The failure of Doha would be a failure for global governance. There must be an avenue for countries to move forward without the major nations blocking negotiations”, said WTO official Manuel A.J. Teehankee. “The role of the WTO, as the dispute settlement forum of choice, should be strengthened”.