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After a negotiating process that lasted many days and that was closely watched by dozens of health and development NGOs, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution on 27 May that established a working group to come up with a global strategy on intellectual property, health research and development, and new medicines for diseases that especially affect developing countries.

The latest is a revised paper on the Green Box, circulated on 30 May.

A ministerial meeting will be convened from June 29 to decide prospects for reaching full modalities in the Doha Development Agenda agriculture and nonagricultural market access negotiations by the end of July, WTD was told (WTD, 5/29/05.

World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy on Tuesday set an end-June goal for a tariff- and subsidy-slashing deal in farm and industrial goods, saying hopes for a global trade pact this year rode on the outcome.

JALLOWAL, India Within days, the monsoon will arrive in India. If generous, it will lend another year of survival to hundreds of millions of villagers. If miserly, crops will wither and bankruptcy will run virally through the villages.

The European Union outlined to the United States on Tuesday how it might improve its agricultural offer in a long-delayed global trade round and said the next move must be Washington's, an EU official said.

India and Brazil have opted out of the informal mini ministerial meeting of key World Trade Organisation (WTO) members to be held on the sidelines of the OECD ministerial in Paris on Tuesday.

Since the failure of WTO Members to agree to modalities by April 30, the Chairs of the Agriculture and Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA) negotiations have embarked on a 6-week period of intensive negotiations with WTO members

The Group of 33 has issued a paper on 11 May to the WTO's Committee on Agriculture (Special Session) making critical comments on a Reference Paper of the chair of the agriculture negotiations on the issue of 'special products' that he had circulated on 4 May.

Four major groupings of developing countries have issued a joint statement warning that the WTO's Doha negotiations are being threatened by attempts by some members to restrict the use of the instruments of special products and special safeguard mechanism that have been proposed during the agriculture talks for the use of developing countries.