The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Geneva

The World Trade Organization confirmed yesterday that Director-General Pascal Lamy will seek a second term to lead the institution charged with forging a new global trade pact.

"I would hereby like to notify you of my decision to seek reappointment as Director-General of the World Trade Organization

for a further term upon the expiry of the current one on 31 August 2009," Lamy said in a letter to the chair of the WTO's General Council. Lamy, the former EU Trade Commissioner and veteran of the French Socialist Party, has headed the WTO since 2004 and has overseen many fruitless attempts to finally clinch a new deal, most recently at a ministerial gathering in Geneva in July.

The Doha round of trade liberalisation talks, launched in Qatar in November 2001 with the aim of boosting developing country economies, has foundered ever since and is currently deadlocked.

"During the last three years I believe that I have done my best" to conclude a deal and strengthen the global multilateral trading system, Lamy said in his letter to Australian ambassador and General Council chair Bruce Gosper.

"We have seen the Doha negotiations move closer to the finish line; we have seen the Aid for Trade agenda take a prominent place as a necessary complement to trade opening; we have welcomed five new members into the organisation," Lamy said.

"I stand ready to continue to serve the WTO for a second term and to make a contribution to reinforcing multilateralism and development," he added.

Earlier the 61-year-old Frenchman won the endorsement of Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister and chief trade negotiator Celso Amorim, who had been touted in some quarters as a possible successor.

"I support Pascal Lamy's candidature for the new director- general, I told him today," he told journalists after a meeting with the WTO chief in Geneva.

"I encourage him. I think he's a great asset for the organisation, he's someone who has shown fairness, understanding, courage, but at the same time equilibrum, so he has the qualities to continue to steer" the organisation, said Amorim.