India says no new deals at WTO without key US concession

Agencies | Abu Dhabi                                               

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

India will only finalize new deals at a WTO ministerial meeting if the United States stops blocking an agreement on a dispute settlement mechanism, New Delhi’s trade minister said yesterday.

Delegates are hoping for progress on issues such as fisheries and agriculture at the World Trade Organization’s 13th ministerial meeting, under way in Abu Dhabi.

But Indian minister Piyush Goyal told AFP on the sidelines of the talks his country would not “finalize” any new agreements without progress on the dispute-settlement system.

“It’s important that the first issue we should settle is that there should be an appellate body and some countries are not allowing that to happen.”

Washington brought a WTO dispute settlement to a grinding halt in 2019 after blocking for years the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s appeals court.

Goyal said “the entire working of WTO currently has come to a little bit of a standstill”.

New agreements require full consensus between the WTO’s 164 member states as per the body’s rules.

“I think it’s important that the issues which relate to the past and have been under consideration for many years should be addressed first and among them is the appellate body which is of prime importance,” he said.

“Only after that we can look at fresh other issues in the future.”

Washington had accused the appellate body of over-interpreting WTO rules, and said that judges’ decisions should not go against the national security of countries.