Major trade powers agreed on Saturday to resume global free trade talks, suspended six months ago over their deep differences, although no timetable has been set, WTO chief Pascal Lamy said, according to Reuters. The consensus at a Swiss-hosted meeting of some 30 trade ministers was that the time had come to get "back to full-negotiating mode," the World Trade Organisation's Lamy told reporters. "I believe we are back in business," European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told Reuters after discussions on the fringes of the annual World Economic Forum gathering in this Alpine resort. The WTO talks were launched in 2001 in an attempt to boost the world economy and ease poverty, shortly after the attacks on the United States jolted the world. They were suspended last July, due mainly to a row over politically sensitive farm goods, and they risk running out of time this year. Lamy declined to set a date for talks to resume. "I cannot say when," he said. The WTO's Doha round of negotiations are widely seen as the broadest global trade package ever negotiated. A deal would cut tariffs on goods ranging from beef cuts to luxury cars among the WTO's 150 member countries and help open new markets in services such as telecoms or insurance. It would also channel billions of dollars in trade-related aid for poor countries to build infrastructure to export more.
