QATAR - Nov. 14 - WTO Agrees To Launch New Trade Round.

The 142 members of the WTO agree to launch a trade liberalisation round in Jan. 2002. The agreement, which follows the collapse of efforts to launch a round at the 1999 Seattle meeting, will help lower barriers to international trade in agriculture, manufactured products and services. WTO Director General Mike Moore calls the six-day meeting "historic". He says the round, due to last three years, should aim to benefit the economies of developing countries. His call is echoed by EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy says: "This has been a hell of a good week for the WTO. The WTO is back on track and the train has left the station". Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative who led the US delegation, says: "Today members of the World Trade Organisation have sent a powerful signal to the world. We have removed the stain of Seattle". He also says the agreement would help the US secure fast-track trade authority in Congress. According to some authoritative estimates, a successful trade round would increase global economic income by hundreds of billion dollars over several years. One of the Doha talks' biggest achievements was an agreement to shelter poor countries' access to medical supplies from the threat of legal challenge in the WTO. The deal partly resolves a bitter dispute fuelled by poor countries' complaints about difficulty in obtaining treatments for HIV/Aids and other diseases. The meeting also approved a waiver from WTO rules of the Cotonou preferential trade agreement between the EU and 78 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.