vrijdag, april 29, 2005
Mauritian candidate quits WTO leadership race, Lamy stays top - Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News | "Jayen Cuttaree, the Mauritian candidate to head the World Trade Organisation, told AFP he was out of the race, leaving former EU trade chief Pascal Lamy top and Uruguay's Carlos Perez del Castillo second.
'We took part in the competition and we lost,' Cuttaree said, after the WTO selection team ended a nine-day second round of consultations with the organisation's 148 members aimed at gauging support for the three nominees."
Mauritian candidate quits WTO leadership race, Lamy stays top
woensdag, april 06, 2005
US 'very comfortable' with Lamy as possible WTO head
Yahoo! News |"A senior State Department official said Washington would be 'very comfortable' with former EU trade chief Pascal Lamy running the WTO but denied a deal had been done to back him in exchange for EU support for the US's controversial candidate at the World Bank.
US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick hailed Lamy, his personal friend, as an excellent candidate to be head of the World Trade Organisation amid growing concerns among developing nations that rich countries are doing backroom deals to fill top international jobs with their own.
Lamy, who is French and who worked closely with Zoellick when the latter was US trade representative, is currently the European Union's candidate to become the next WTO director general.
'I obviously consider commissioner Lamy both as a friend and a very accomplished trade leader,' Zoellick said at a news conference at the European Parliament here.
'We consider that he would be a very strong candidate... We've made it clear that we'd be very comfortable with commissioner Lamy.'
Other candidates in the running to succeed Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand are Brazilian trade ambassador Luiz Felipe Seixas Correa, Carlos Perez del Castillo of Uruguay and Mauritian Foreign Minister Jayen Cuttaree.
Diplomats are waiting to see who will pull out of the race first. Many trading nations -- including the United States and India -- have not yet clearly indicated which candidate they support.
Zoellick invited Lamy to come to Washington to plead his case for running the WTO.
'I tried to stay in touch with commissioner Lamy on this in his consultations with other countries. I encourage him to come visit the United States which I believe he is going to be doing in the month of April to talk to members of our Congress and other members of our executive branch.'
WTO members are to make their final choice on replacing Supachai by the end of May.
The appointment of former US Defense Department official Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank has raised concern among developing countries that the United States and the EU may be tacitly sharing out the top posts at major international financial institutions, including the WTO.
Media reports have suggested that the March 31 appointment of Wolfowitz, widely regarded as a hardline conservative in international affairs, was backed by the Europeans in exchange for US support for Lamy at the WTO.
But Zoellick said: 'I've seen allegations of a trade-off; there's no trade-off. Commissioner Lamy is... a very strong candidate, he doesn't need a trade-off.'
Since 1944, the US favourite had traditionally been granted the World Bank job while western Europeans have been first choice at the World Bank's sister institution, the International Monetary Fund.
Developing countries, which have grown in political strength at the WTO in recent years, are now more anxious than ever to ensure that the global trade body does not go the same way.
The last leadership race at the WTO in 1999 was marked by bitter divisions among members states, including a partial north-south split.
The WTO wants to ensure there is no re-run of that deadlock that ended in a compromise halving of the six-year mandate between current chief Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand and his predecessor Mike Moore of New Zealand."
