Moore Sees China Entry Edging Closer

World Trade Organisation chief Michael Moore said on Wednesday talks to seal China's entry to the global trade body were gathering pace ahead of a formal meeting in Geneva set for the end of this month.

Moore also said he would urge Asia-Pacific trade ministers meeting in Shanghai on Wednesday and Thursday to push China's accession bid.

"I'm hopeful that ministers... are able to negotiate and get a little closer and take their position to Geneva at the end of the month so the working party can get into more detail and the working party can get closer to an agreement," Moore told Reuters in an interview.

WTO headquarters said on Tuesday it would convene a five-day formal session of a working party on June 28 for negotiations on China's bid to join the 141-nation trade group.

"We're not a world trade organisation until China is a member," Moore told a news conference on the sidelines of trade talks of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group in China's financial capital Shanghai.

China hosts the APEC meetings this year and ministers see this as giving added impetus to its 14-year quest for WTO membership.

Moore declined to put a deadline on China's accession to the WTO, but said he was hopeful it would be finalised soon.

He told Reuters it was inconceivable that Beijing would not be part of a new global trade round -- expected to be launched in Doha, Qatar in November -- even if China was not officially at the negotiating table if the new round kicks off this year. Beijing now participates in WTO as an observer.

"It is impossible to conceive that China would not be part of the next negotiation before its conclusion," he said. A trade round would last a minimum of three years, Moore added.

"It's possible to conceive for some technical reason we didn't have China at the table at Doha. I want them at the table, everybody does and that's the conditions we're talking about," Moore said.

But he said failure to end the accession process before November's summit would not derail the launch of fresh global trade talks either.

"It would not be effectively delaying and China would not want us to delay," Moore said. "Nobody is using China's membership as a reason to delay."

Moore said he was confident the Qatar talks would re-start the stalled free trade agenda that fell by the wayside after the collapse of the Seattle summit two years ago.

"We will not end in the same way as Seattle because we won't go to Doha with an agenda that's so impossible that ministers cannot reach agreement," Moore said.

APEC ministers were due to head to a retreat on Wednesday afternoon in the lakeside town of Zhouzhuang near Shanghai, where Moore will make his pitch.

The APEC trade ministers are widely expected to call for China's entry to WTO before the year's end and a new round of global trade talks.

(China Daily 06/06/2001)