§ Mr. HepburnTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent discussions her Department has had with the World Trade Organisation on increasing the representation of developing countries in the WTO. [20971]
§ Clare ShortWe are in regular touch with the WTO on this issue, most recently on 7 December.
The UK is in favour of the expansion of AITIC, the Swiss NGO which has been supporting resource-constrained WTO members since 1998, into a broader-based organisation with a wider mandate than at present. We worked closely on this with other donors in the run-up 546W to the WTO Ministerial meeting at Doha. At the Ministerial, an important commitment was made by a range of beneficiaries and donors to establish a task force on AITIC' s future development. The first meeting took place on 7 December in Geneva. The WTO was represented. Some of the £1 million available from my Department to support countries which are under-represented in Geneva (which I announced on 7 November) might assist this work.
We also hope that AITIC might take forward some of the constructive recommendations made by John Weekes' "Study on the Assistance and Representation needs of the Developing Countries without WTO Permanent Representation in Geneva" (published in August 2001), which my Department part-funded through the Commonwealth Secretariat.