Kamal Nath to hold trade talks in UK from Jan 30

Commerce Minister Kamal Nath will hold a series of meetings in Britain on January 30 and 31.

In a determined bid to make the Doha Development round of trade negotiations a success, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath will hold a series of meetings in Britain in the coming days.

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The Minister will hold bilateral talks in London on January 30 and 31 and meet Peter Mandelson, the chief trade negotiator for the 25-nation European Union, on February 1.

Mandelson has called for "intense, concentrated, bilateral contacts" in order to get the Doha round moving.

He told an audience of business and political leaders in Berlin on Monday that the situation following the mid-December meeting of WTO trade ministers in Hong Kong was "serious but not desperate," a report said.

He noted that the G-20 and the G-90 group of developing countries "do not have identical interests and capacities in trade."

"Some are major economic players and exporters on the world stage and others need all the help we can give them," he said.

Kamal Nath said the EU had put far more on the table than any other WTO country and it was now up to the others to respond.

"Any developed or emerging economy that thinks it can come to the Doha table empty-handed will, I'm afraid, go home the same way," he told his audience in Berlin.

"I cannot sell a deal in which Europe gives but gets nothing in return," he stated.

The London talks between Kamal Nath and Mandelson should help end the stalemate between developed and developing countries, particularly over agriculture.