'India, others suffering from prisoner's dilemma'

NEW DELHI: India, Brazil, the EU and US, the four key players in global trade talks, are locked in a 'prisoner's dilemma' wanting to maximize their own gains without concern for others, WTO Director General Pascal Lamy has said.

"They are locked in a sort of prisoner's dilemma, as if the only concern of each individual player would be maximizing his or her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff," Lamy said in a recent speech in Washington.

Despite being politically committed to concluding the negotiation by the end of this year, the four crucial players are 'somewhat paralysed by fear that any move in the negotiations by any one of them will be pocketed by others and will not lead to reciprocal moves', Lamy said.

It is as if the cooperation, essential to multilateral trading system, was dominated by withdrawing, so that the only possible balance for the 'game' would be for all players to withdraw, Lamy said in a speech released worldwide.

Referring to the recent meeting of G-4 and G-6 in New Delhi, he said even "if we take just agriculture and industrial goods, working back from the conclusion of the Doha Round, participants will have to elaborate their detailed schedules of commitments."

This will, in turn, have to reflect agreed modalities. For achieving these modalities, a cross-cutting negotiation would need to take place on both issues, he said.

"I am not offering a specific timeline for these steps, but there is precious little time to waste," he said.

The Doha Round of negotiations, launched in 2001, has missed several deadlines. Major players have now pledged to complete it by end of 2007.