Doha Round - I: What Went Wrong Ahead of Hong Kong?

Soon after Pascal Lamy took over as chief of the World Trade Organisation in September he expressed confidence that at the Hong Kong ministerial, "two-thirds" of the work in the Doha round would be completed. Within two months, the WTO chief had to take the unusual step of virtually downgrading the Hong Kong meeting to a launching pad, another intermediate stage on the road to reaching full modalities in the round. A dispassionate analysis would reveal that this time as well, the EU and US, the two dominant actors are more to be blamed than the others. The G-20 group of developing countries, notwithstanding some major differences between its two drivers, Brazil and India, has however played a constructive role in advancing the negotiations.