GMA invites WTO head to Asean summit

HONG KONG – President Arroyo said here Wednesday she would invite World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy to the ASEAN summit in Cebu in December to discuss ways and means to revive the stalled Doha round of talks.

"We are inviting the executive director of the WTO to join our December summit after he has indicated that he is interested in joining," Mrs. Arroyo said.

She said the revival of the WTO talks may be one of the initiatives that the Philippines could raise during the summit.

"So how can we again have new multilateral efforts to keep the world working together? In fact, that is part of what the Hong Kong-based businessmen took up today (Wednesday). They hope that the December summit in Cebu will be an occasion to revive the WTO talks which simply have stalled," she said.

"Having the world work together on trade is very important for our region, for the individual countries and for the world. We are not talking about a free trade area in the world, we are talking about an orderly liberalized trade with rules, with very clear rules of the game and sanctions for those who violate the rules," Mrs. Arroyo said.

She said this would make for orderly trade which would be very good for each of the individual countries in this modern world in the 21st century.

"So that will be one of our initiatives in December together with the executive director of WTO - how do we make the world start working together again on trade," Mrs. Arroyo said.

Trade Secretary Peter Favila said Lamy was looking forward to have a bilateral meeting with the Philippines and Indonesia and since this would take place during the leader’s summit, it will be a good occasion for the WTO director general to touch base with the other ASEAN members.

"I mentioned this to the President and the consensus is that if he wishes to make that special trip to be with us in Cebu then by all means. So I am going to confirm that we are going to send an invitation to Pascal Lamy," he said.

Philippine Ambassador to Geneva Manuel Teehankee was making the arrangements, he said.