India will only finalise new deals at a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting if the United States stops blocking an agreement on a dispute settlement mechanism, New Delhi’s trade minister said on Wednesday.
Delegates are hoping for progress on issues such as fisheries and agriculture at the WTO’s 13th ministerial meeting, underway in Abu Dhabi.
But Indian minister Piyush Goyal told AFP on the sidelines of the talks his country would not “finalise” any new agreements without progress on the dispute-settlement system.
“It’s important that the first issue we should settle is that there should be an appellate body and some countries are not allowing that to happen,” he said.
Washington brought a WTO dispute settlement to a grinding halt in 2019 after blocking for years the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s appeals court.—AFP
