India on Wednesday said developed and developing countries should now ‘‘close their differences’’ and move forward after the Cancun debacle but felt more ‘‘transparency’’ in decision-making process was needed at the WTO to help towards this end.‘‘The WTO decision-making process should now become more transparent and inclusive to prevent failures like that of Cancun,’’ Special Secretary in Commerce Ministry S.N. Menon told a conference on Cancun ministerial.Since everybody knows the divergences after the collapse of Cancun ministerial, he said it would now be easier to close them and move forward as bilateral and regional trade agreements were no substitute for rule-based multilateral trading system. Supachai to tour Asian countries NEW DELHI: IN A bid to break the impasse over the issues that led to the collapse of the Cancun ministerial, the WTO Director-General, Supachai Panitchpakdi will tour some of the Asian, African and Latin American countries to put the multilateral negotiations back on track.(PTI) Though Cancun ministerial might have collapsed, one important thing that has emerged out of it was that the developing countries’ trade concerns could no longer be ignored, he said, adding, if EU and US had its way on their pro-developed proposal on agriculture, then the rest of the member-countries would have been isolated. Former Indian Ambassador to WTO S. Narayanan, who also spoke at the conference jointly organised by EU and Administrative Staff College of India said he did not agree with the view that there should be any change in the decision-making process of WTO in the face of frequent failures of the ministerials.
