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World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz pressed the G-20 Finance Ministers during a high-level meeting held outside Beijing -- saying that the poor of the world would suffer the most if international trade negotiations failed.
Wolfowitz emphasized that leaders of all countries had an obligation to ensure the success of the December Doha Round of trade talks in Hong Kong. In a separate interview, he said that "time is running out" for the trade talks to succeed.
"I just came from visiting some very poor areas of Western China -- and before that I’ve seen extreme poverty in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and countries in Africa," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
"It is the people I saw in those places, people living on less than a dollar a day – people who are not present at this summit, but people who we at this summit are supposed to represent.
"There are 1.2 billion of them. They have waited a long time."
Earlier, at the opening ceremony for the meeting, the President of China, Mr. Hu Jintao, said that "thed development of the multilateral trading system is now at a crucial stage. The outcome of the Doha Round will have a direct impact on promoting balanced and orderly world development."
President Hu said that countries should show "greater political sincerity and demonstrate necessary flexibility" to push the talks towards a substantive outcome in Hong Kong in December.
Mr. Wolfowitz emphasized that success was far from assured. "Let me be very clear: unless serious concessions are made by all sides -- developing countries as well as developed countries, Europe, the United States, Japan, everyone -- the Doha Round of trade talks will fail and the people who will suffer the most are the poor people of the world," he said.
"These are difficult issues and it may be uncomfortable for many here to step forward and give up subsidies and other barriers to free trade, but that temporary discomfort is nothing compared to the daily discomfort and deprivation of the poorest people of the world.
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Doha Development Agenda and Aid for Trade
Doha Development Agenda and Aid for Trade- Corrigendum
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