*{World business sounds alarm about prospects for Seattle trade talks [http://www.iccwbo.org/home/news_archives/1999/alarm_about_prospects_for_seattle_talks.asp]
    
Paris, 26 November 1999 -} The International Chamber of Commerce today said it was unthinkable that governments meeting in Seattle next week should fail to decide on a new round of multilateral trade negotiations. 

Briefing journalists before next week's ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, ICC Secretary General Maria Livanos Cattaui said: "Thousands of our member companies all over the world believe that the progress of multilateral trade liberalization must not be allowed to falter." 

Mrs Cattaui said the inability of WTO governments to agree even an agenda for a new trade round augured badly for the ministerial meeting in Seattle. "With only a few days to go, we believe it is time to sound the alarm," she added.

"The rules-based mutilateral trading system is one of the finest achievements of the second half of the 20th century. Its authority must be upheld if we are not to descend once more into a world of protectionism, with all the sad and tragic consequences we know so well."

The ICC Secretary General said that business supported raising environmental and labour standards. But she questioned whether it was in the interests of hundreds of millions of people in the developing world for trade sanctions to be used to enforce these standards.

"By isolating a country, will we improve labour or environmental standards? It solves nothing to make people poorer by denying their countries access to external markets. The United Nations, not the WTO, is the right place to handle these issues."

Mrs Cattaui said she hoped that the Seattle Ministerial conference would succeed in launching a broadly-based and balanced round of negotiations to the benefit of all WTO member countries. 

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