WTO to focus on dispute role after Doha blow

By Jonathan Lynn - Analysis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Trade Organisation (WTO) will focus on its role resolving disputes after the latest efforts to strike a new global trade pact collapsed on Tuesday.

Ministers leaving 9 days of abortive talks seeking a breakthrough in the WTO's Doha round reaffirmed their commitment to the multilateral trading system umpired by the WTO.

But many admitted that for the time being it will be easier to seek bilateral or regional arrangements.

And many acknowledged it would be some time before the Doha negotiations -- already in their seventh year -- could be revived, even though their current offers remain on the table.

"The WTO doesn't become less relevant or important because the Doha round goes down -- the Doha round is not the WTO," said David Hartridge, a senior counsellor at GLOBAL law firm White and Case.

Besides its role in trade liberalisation, the WTO also helps settle trade disputes by helping governments adjust to trade tensions within an agreed legal system, Hartridge, a former acting director-general of the WTO, told Reuters.

He pointed to the long-running dispute between the United States and the European Union over passenger jets made by Boeing

and Airbus as an example of the success of the WTO in preventing trade disputes degenerating into sanctions and damaging retaliation.