Three things struck us in reading Mr. Azev�do's remarks from earlier today.
The first was
what wasn't there. He made no mention of the cross-linkages between those elements of the Bali package he discussed. That's understandable. His goal is to get an agreement, and publicly highlighting the bargaining with respect to Bali's elements would almost certainly have been counterproductive. And yet, at some level, that is where the bargains need to be struck if there is to be a Bali package.
The second, was
the deadline stated. He didn't name the date, but he made it clear that there is a deadline for finishing the Bali negotiation, and it is not the 6th of December. Here it is worth quoting the Director-General at length:
"But let me be clear: we cannot work right up until the wire. Our deadline cannot be the start of the Ministerial Conference. One of the clearest messages from my consultations with Members is that Bali must not be a negotiating conference. The duration of the flight would be enough for positions to become entrenched. It would be the surest way to kill this agreement. We have to close this in Geneva."
We are not quite sure why, but the reference to the long flight made us think of a favorite scene in the 1969 film
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Running from the law, the two train robbers are trapped on a ledge high above a mountain river. Butch (Paul Newman) tell Sundance (Robert Redford) that they have to jump. Sundance says, No. He's afraid and confesses, "I can't swim."
Butch laughs: "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you."
It doesn't, though. They take the plunge and escape. Let's hope that the members of the WTO in Geneva take the plunge as well, and reach an agreement this month in November. The headline on the op-ed by
Thomas Donohue in Politico yesterday sums up the situation pretty well:
"It's Bali or bust for the WTO."Finally, with respect to the Director-General himself, though our judgment is made from a distance, it seems to us that Roberto Azev�do is demonstrating remarkable leadership under very difficult circumstances. We hope it pays off.
A note on numbering. We called this "The Final Geneva Push - Part I." We did that because we intend to say a little more about one aspect of this entry, namely, cotton. We shall do that in the next TTALK Quote.