Let’s hope this means more clarity

Trade ministers in Paris for the June OECD meetings are looking for Lamy's 'second track' to a Doha deal.

"U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk called for a new approach to the Doha talks, involving direct negotiations with key trading partners as the traditional multilateral format was not working…'We think getting more clarity around that ['exactly what the U.S. would gain'] may be the key to helping us find a solution to a way forward,' Kirk said after a meeting of ministers at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)." Extract from Reuters via Portfolio.com

Lamy did not mean—as this news report suggests—that the 'second track' would be series of bilateral deals. That's a long-standing U.S. fallback position (from the days of GATT), but I doubt Kirk had that in mind either. Here's the official account of what he said.

By the way, isn't it great to see that USTR has finally dumped that crappy old web-site and has adopted the much more accessible Obama-Whitehouse (or, maybe, Vivek Kundra) style?

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