France to Host EU Trade Talks Before WTO Meeting

France will call the meeting in the week before ministers from WTO countries gather in Geneva.

France said on Friday it would host a special meeting of European Union foreign ministers to address concerns about world trade talks just days before key WTO discussions next month.

France, a staunch defender of Europe's farm subsidies, will call the meeting in the week before ministers from World Trade Organisation countries gather in Geneva from July 21 to try to reach a breakthrough in the long-delayed Doha negotiations for a global trade deal.

"Europe must be more reactive and listen to citizens' needs more," French junior minister for European affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet told France Info radio.

"Europe will not be able to stand by and do nothing on the WTO, which was a great cause of trouble in Ireland with agriculture, as it is in France," Jouyet said, referring to Irish voters' rejection of the Lisbon Treaty to reform the EU.

He added that the bloc also needed to address concerns about high oil prices.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner would therefore host a special meeting of his EU counterparts some time between July 14 and 20 "to deal quickly with the European positions regarding the WTO", Jouyet said.

France takes over the rotating EU presidency on July 1 for six months, giving it a key role in drawing up the bloc's response to any deal hammered out at the WTO, nearly seven years after the Doha round was launched.

SARKOZY CRITICAL

French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week said EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson was partly to blame for Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty earlier this month, and lambasted his handling of the WTO talks.

France has long been opposed to the kind of agriculture concessions Mandelson is offering to close the long-overdue negotiations for a WTO deal.

Several other European countries have also said the bloc stands to get nothing in return in other areas such as industrial goods and services.

Mandelson has said he will push big developing nations such as India and China to open further their markets for goods like automobiles and chemicals as part of a WTO deal, but he has rejected attempts by EU states to tie his hands in the talks.

The European Commission negotiates foreign trade deals on behalf of the EU's 27 member states.

With developing nations demanding that rich countries lower trade barriers protecting their farmers, agriculture is one of the main issues in the WTO talks.

Negotiators are racing to try to clinch a new global trade pact before November's U.S. presidential election threatens to put the process on hold perhaps for several more years. WTO chief Pascal Lamy on Wednesday called for a group of ministers to meet, probably for several days, from July 21 to try to push the round toward conclusion, diplomats said.