Bangkok, Thailand
February 24, 1999 Having missed two self-imposed deadlines, trade envoys in Geneva have now set March 12 as a tentative date for deciding on a new chief for the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the 134-member trade governing body. The WTO had already missed its original decision-making deadline of the end of December, and then a revised target of the end of January by which member countries were to express their preferences.
Trade officials said the date had been proposed on Monday by Mexico's ambassador at an informal meeting of the heads of member states' delegations and no one had spoken against the idea. The March 12 deadline will give the appointee around a month-and-a-half to prepare himself for the new post.
Delegates are still hoping to avoid a long and damaging battle over the appointment of the new WTO director-general, which is regarded as a key position at a time when the liberalised trade system championed by WTO members faces growing pressure because of global economic turmoil.
There are four candidates for the job -- Canada's High Commissioner in London Roy Maclaren, former Moroccan trade minister Hassan Abouyoub, ex-prime minister of New Zealand Michael Moore, and Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi. None of the candidates to take over from director-general Renato Ruggiero at the end of April has an outright majority. The two largest WTO members, the United States and the European Union, have yet to express an opinion.
The first sounding of WTO members in early January indicated that Supachai was most members' first preference to succeed the Italian former trade minister, with Abouyoub a distant second and Maclaren and Moore trailing further behind. But Moore has since emerged top of the second preferences list and is now seen as a possible winner under the WTO's consensus-based decision-making process.
A source said that there was still an argument within the organisation over how delegates should reach consensus. There is a proposal from one member that in order to preserve the democratic process, countries supporting candidates who did not appear to have broad support should consider changing their choices. Meanwhile, a delegate from a developed nation suggested that as a means of preserving the spirit of consensus, countries which are apparently in a majority should also reconsider their choices.
Earlier, the WTO's General Council was deadlocked over how to proceed with the selection process. Some countries argued that William Rossier, Swiss ambassador to the WTO, should be given a new mandate and then be asked to report the latest tallies for each of the candidates. A handful of members countered that Rossier should first supply the updated information so that the General Council could devise a new mandate after seeing the reported scores. This group has now apparently softened its position, according to the WTO source.
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