With the Seattle
Ministerial Conference now only 9 weeks away, Mr. Moore said it was critical that every
effort be made to bring developing countries, particularly the Least Developed Countries,
fully into the process of preparing for the Ministerial Conference and for the
negotiations that will follow."It is in no-one's
interest to have any of our members on the outside looking in," Mr. Moore said.
"No member government should feel it is disadvantaged going into our preparations for
the Seattle Ministerial Conference."
Mr. Moore
announced that Anthony Hill, former Ambassador to the WTO from Jamaica, would serve on a
short-term consultancy basis to assist in developing programmes for representatives from
the 29 WTO Member Governments that do not have missions in Geneva.
Before Mr.
Moore's appointment on 1 September, he travelled to Brussels to meet with many of the
Ministers and Ambassadors from non-resident countries to hear their concerns first hand.
"Ensuring
that these non-resident ambassadors and officials from capitals are fully engaged in our
work is among my top priorities. Amb. Hill is uniquely suited to assist us in putting in
place a number of programmes we are preparing to provide these representatives with the
most complete picture of the situation as it develops between now and Seattle and then
beyond," Mr. Moore said.
Mr. Moore
also announced the appointment of Chiedu Osakwe, as co-ordinator for the WTO's work with
Least Developed Countries. Mr. Osakwe, a WTO Secretariat official, will work closely with
the five other agencies that together with the WTO constitute the Integrated Framework of
action for the Least Developed Countries.* Mr. Osakwe will be a special advisor
to the Director-General on these important issues.
Mr. Moore's
first major address, to be delivered at a meeting of Group of 77 Developing Countries
in Marrakesh, will focus on the issue of trade and development.
The interests
of the LDCs are of paramount importance, Mr. Moore said. The Seattle Ministerial
Conference cannot be considered a success, he said, unless the outcome is balanced and
this means a market access package for LDCs that further opens developed country markets
to their goods and services.
While the
removal of barriers to LDC exports would represent a vital component of a development
programme for the weakest countries, Mr. Moore said, it was critical that the WTO work
more effectively with other International Organizations, including UNCTAD, the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund, the International Trade Centre and the UN Development
Programme, to insure that all areas of concern to LDCs are addressed.
"These
countries need all our help in addressing the problems of capacity building, debt relief
as well as market access. We all have a moral responsibility to assist as best we
can," Mr. Moore said.
During his
first official week on the job, Mr. Moore met with Kamil Idris, Director General of
the World Intellectual Property Organization and Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Mr. Moore will travel to Washington at
the end of this month for the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, where he will
have further contact with ministers and heads of International Organizations.
"I look
forward to meeting with the heads of all the International Organizations as soon as I can.
I know that all of us share the same vision of providing the poorest with every
opportunity to improve the living standards of workers and families," Mr. Moore said. |
