MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

WTO cautions about bilateralism.

World Trade Organization Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi addressing the 21 leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC summit meeting in Thailand, called for a strong political commitment with the resumption of the failed global trade negotiations.

"For some of you it might sound as an old tune, but for me it's the sound of alarm", said Mr. Panitchpakdi who insisted that one of the major concerns is (free trade) bilateral and regional agreements, "detrimental for the multilateral agenda".

"If these groups advance and set their own rules they can trigger conflicts between themselves and the non signatories of bilateral agreements".

The recent September WTO conference in Mexico that was supposed to advance with the Doha agenda failed following discrepancies between developed and developing countries regarding agriculture subsidies and the Singapore issues.

Mr. Panitchpakdi nevertheless described the WTO Cancún meeting as "productive" since it helped prepare the coming Geneva meeting scheduled for December 15, but warned that world trade expansion in recent years has been "low and without a consensus on trade rules the world economy conditions could worsen".

"This year we most probably will see that world trade will expand at a lower rate that the world economy".

On concluding this Tuesday the APEC summit is expected, in a joint release, to call on all countries to resume WTO talks.

Chinese president Hu Jintao said that in spite of setbacks, "WTO will finally prevail", and recommended all APEC members to keep to WTO rules when negotiating bilateral or regional free trade agreements.

Fourteen year old APEC membership is as follows, Australia, Brunei, Canada, South Korea, Chile, China, US, Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.