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To: kris b who wrote (53653)	2/13/2006 4:48:46 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

The pull from the south is just too great. Besides, Americans control directly or indirectly most of what we have anyway. I used to see a lot of my parts for one of my cars coming from canada - why didn't you guys ever try to build your own car? DJ Leaders Fail To Agree How To Jump-start World Trade Talks HAMMANSKRAAL, South Africa (AP)--An exclusive club of center-left government leaders couldn't agree at their summit Sunday on how best to jump-start world trade negotiations stalled over contentious issues between rich and poor countries. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil tried at the Progressive Governance Summit and in a private meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to get an endorsement for his call for a meeting of leaders of poor and wealthy nations to resolve the dispute. Blair, the only G8 leader at the summit, said agreement in the stalled Doha round of world trade negotiations was essential and key to making progress on the Group of Eight most industrialized nations' initiative to reduce African poverty and speed the continent's development. But instead of endorsing Lula's call for a special summit, Blair agreed only to initiate efforts to determine if such a meeting was possible. Rich and poor countries are divided over access to markets, protective tariffs and support payments in agriculture. Lula appeared disappointed when the center-left leaders of the U.K., Brazil, Sweden, New Zealand, South Africa, Ethiopia and South Korea - who came together because they share a common political philosophy - couldn't agree on how to revive the stalled talks. "I think what will happen is poor countries will become poorer by making concessions to richer countries," said Lula. "We don't want richer countries to become poor. We want to have what they have." Sunday's summit of seven self-proclaimed "progressive" leaders grew out of a meeting in 1998 between Blair and then U.S. President Bill Clinton. Membership in the Progressive Governance Network is by invitation only. South African President Thabo Mbeki said the summit, the first such meeting held in the developing world, discussed topics as diverse as the global economy, Muslim outrage over cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed, global security, poverty reduction, energy and climate change. But the main focus of the talks was on the stalled Doha round of world trade talks. Leaders from developed and developing countries said agreement this year was vital to sustaining free trade, but couldn't agree on how to go forward. "Failure in the development round of world trade talks would be a disastrous blow to the poorest countries in the world and to developed countries like ourselves," Blair said. The U.K. Prime Minister said a global trade agreement, especially in the development round, is key to an ambitious initiative adopted by the G8 last July to drastically cut African debt and poverty, increase its rate of development and fight disease. But while Lula's positions on trade talks are echoed by most of the developing world, much of the developed world, led by the European Union, the U.S. and Japan, take tough negotiating positions because of important domestic issues such as support payments to agriculture. "Brazil is willing to do its part and make any concessions that are necessary, as long as they are proportional," Lula told a summit news conference. Foreign Minister Celso Amorim of Brazil told reporters earlier that Lula had decided that as a gesture of goodwill, Brazil would open its markets to less developed countries. (END) Dow Jones Newswires February 12, 2006 11:54 ET (16:54 GMT) Copyright (c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.- - 11 54 AM EST 02-12-06