Chinese Trade Minister Meets With EU Trade Commissioner

Visiting Chinese Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng and European Union (EU)'s Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy held friendly talks here on China-EU cooperation and China's accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO), a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday in Brussels.

Shi Guangsheng and Lamy had an in-depth exchange of views on the development of China-EU economic and trade relations, China's accession into the WTO and the launching of a new round of WTO negotiations.

Lamy was confident with China's early entry into the WTO, saying China is enjoying a good situation for its bid to join the multilateral trade organization and he believes that the 18th meeting of task force on China's entry into the WTO, to be held in Geneva later this month, will be the last meeting that will give a final summary on its work.

At the same time, both Shi and Lamy expressed their positive views on the launching of a new round of the world's multilateral trade talks at their ministerial meeting to be held in Doha in November. WTO members failed to launch the new round of world trade talks at their ministerial meeting held in Seattle in late 1999.

The two ministers also expressed their willingness to promote cooperation for strengthening WTO's multilateral trading system.

During their meeting on Wednesday after they attended the fourth EU-China summit between Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji and EU leaders, Shi and Lamy also expressed their hope to keep close contact in the future.






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