Moore sees China entry edging closer

Moore sees China entry edging closer

SHANGHAI (Reuters): World Trade Organization chief Michael Moore said on Wednesday talks to seal China's entry to the global trade body were gathering pace ahead of a formal meeting in Geneva set for the end of this month.

Moore also said he would urge Asia-Pacific trade ministers meeting in Shanghai on Wednesday and Thursday to push for China's 14-year accession bid.

"I'm hopeful that ministers... are able to negotiate and get a little closer and take their position to Geneva at the end of the month so the working party can get into more detail and the working party can get closer to an agreement," Moore told Reuters in an interview.

WTO headquarters said on Tuesday it would convene a five-day formal session of a working party on June 28 for negotiations on China's bid to join the 141-nation global trade group.

"We're not a world trade organization until China is a member," Moore told a news conference on the sidelines of trade talks of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group in China's financial capital Shanghai.

China hosts the APEC meetings this year and ministers see its host status as giving added impetus to Beijing's quest for WTO membership. The 21-member APEC group generates 60 percent of world output and about half of global trade.

China's WTO negotiations have stalled on sticky issues such as the level of subsidies it will be allowed to grant its farmers after accession, insurance issues and trading rights.

Moore declined to put a deadline on China's accession to the WTO, but said he was hopeful it would be finalized soon. He noted it would take at least three months after China's entry was agreed upon to sort out technicalities.

Moore was hopeful WTO members could come up with an agenda for launching a new round of global talks at Doha, Qatar in November on liberalizing trade and services and cutting tariffs.

He told Reuters that if a new global trade round kicked off this year, Beijing should be part of it -- even if China was not officially at the negotiating table at the start of the talks.

China now participates in WTO as an observer.

"It is impossible to conceive that China would not be part of the next negotiation before its conclusion," he said. A trade round would last a minimum of three years, Moore added.

"I want them at the table, everybody does and that's the conditions we're talking about," Moore said. It would be "a failure of political will of monumental proportions" if China did not take part in a new round, he added.

But Moore also said the expected launch of global trade talks at November's summit would not be derailed even if China failed to join the WTO ahead of it.

"China would not want us to delay," Moore said. "Nobody is using China's membership as a reason to delay."

Trade experts say China is not likely to gain membership until the end of the year at the earliest.