Great Expectations

The newly elected World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General, Brazilian Roberto Azevedo, was not exaggerating when he was recently quoted as saying, "We are too close to success to accept failure, it is all or nothing now." Since its formation in 1995and going back even farther when its precursor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established at the end of World War IIlittle has been achieved in the effort to find a global set of regulations to oversee fair and equitable international trading. From the Uruguayan Round to the Singapore Issues and recently the Doha Development Agenda, the WTO has been an arena on which the divergent interests of the developed, the developing and the least-developed countries have sought to find a common ground. So far, there has been no satisfactory solution. Yet, following more than four decades of negotiations, there is optimism that the 159 member countries of the WTO will, at long last, come to an agreement that will have an impact on one critical universal problemfood security.