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The statement said that India had consistently opposed expansion of the WTO agenda to include new issues.

Khor said that the Doha declaration had stated that developing countries' needs and interests would be at the heart of its programme. But this had turned out to be empty rhetoric.

With prime access to elite government and corporate circles, its various corporate members gain handsomely from international trade agreements, from IMF or World Bank handouts, and from privatization programs.

Are WTO members courageous enough to define 'explicit consensus?' Allow me to define it for you as the following: Unless people state an approval to negotiate, there is no explicit consensus.

Several NGO representatives analysed what they called the 'myths' surrounding the proposed investment agreement in the WTO, and called for Ministers to decide against negotiating an agreement.

On modalities, members are split into two camps with developed and developing countries pushing for vastly different approaches.

Progress on market access has been highlighted as one of the principal negotiating objectives of the United States, along with agricultural reform.

'This Business Advisory Body process could worsen rather than improve the WTO's endemic problems with secrecy, internally or with civil society,' said Navarro.

European Trade Commissioner Mr. Pascal Lamy has insisted that the Singapore issues is part of the single undertaking agreed to at the WTO's Doha Ministerial Conference.

The US and the Cairns Group consider its proposed tariff reductions too shallow while the European Union and Japan see them as to deep.