Both developing and wealthy countries must make serious concessions on farm trade to salvage world trade talks, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said Saturday, appealing for compromise for the sake of 1.2 billion people living in dire poverty. Wolfowitz, speaking on the sidelines of a financial summit of the Group of Twenty industrial and developing nations, urged Japan, the EU, the U.S. and other rich countries to wean themselves of agricultural subsidies to prevent a failure of the Doha round of world trade talks, which has stalled mainly over thorny farm trade issues. "Unless serious concessions are made by everyone the Doha round of talks will fail and the people who will suffer the most are the poor people of the world," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. "They have waited a long time," Wolfowitz said, urging other leaders at the meeting in China to contribute toward progress in the trade talks. The World Bank chief said he recently visited impoverished regions in western China, South Asia and in Africa, witnessing the conditions faced by the 1.2 billion people worldwide living on less than US$1 a day, the bank's standard for absolute poverty. "The solution has to come from opening markets," he said. "These people need aid but more than aid they need a place to sell the products of their work. Otherwise they'll be aid dependent forever and that's not a solution. The World Trade Organization's 148 members are scheduled to meet in Hong Kong in mid-December to discuss an outline for a global trade deal as part of the Doha round of negotiations, named for the Qatari capital where it was launched in 2001.
