Issue 2, 1 December 2009

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Day 1: Ministers Target 2010 for Doha Conclusion, but Gaps Remain

Day one of the WTO’s Seventh Ministerial Conference saw WTO officials and trade ministers from a wide range of member governments set the stage for a push to conclude the beleaguered Doha Round negotiations by the end of 2010.

But there are no signs that the divisions that have bedeviled the talks for most of their eight years are abating.

This quickly became apparent during the opening plenary Monday afternoon.

"We have made our specific interests well known: that meaningful market opening is required to complete the round," said US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, who was one of the first speakers. He strongly implied that much of this market opening needed to come from "key emerging markets," in barely veiled references to countries like Brazil, China, and India. Read more

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Contributors to this issue of the BRIDGES Daily Update are Trineesh Biswas, Anja Halle and Paige McClanahan. Editor: Trineesh Biswas. Director: Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz. ICTSD is an independent, not-for-profit organisation based at: 7, chemin de Balexert, 1219 Geneva, Switzerland, tel: (+41-22) 917- 8492; fax: 917-8093.

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ISSN 1563-003X