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Date: December 03, 2005
PRESS RELEASE
Islamabad, 3rd December 2005:- Developed countries should make meaningful concessions and show flexibility in their stances so that development and livelihood of billions of people in the developing countries are not affected by distorted and unfair trade regime. This was the consensus view of the seminar held today at Main Hall of Parliament Lodges organized by Ms. Kashmala Tariq, MNA and Executive Director, Parliamentarians Commission for Human Rights on the theme of “achieving progress through WTO”. Seminar was jointly organized by Parliamentarians Commission for Human Rights, Global Trust for Human Rights and Consultants Sans Frontier. The first session was chaired by secretary Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Ismail Qureshi who gave the audience an overview of WTO negotiations in Agriculture sector being the central point of negotiations. Mr. Christian R. DeAngelis, Deputy Economic Counselor US Embassy and Mr. Abdul Mujeeb Pirzada, Member National Assembly, Maulana Hamid-ul-Haq Haqani Member National Assembly, and Shafique Chaudhry Chief Coordinator Parliamentarians Commission for Human Rights also expressed their view point on the agriculture issues. Second session was presided over by Secretary Ministry of Commerce, Syed Asif Shah and during the session other sectors of negotiations were discussed threadbare. Mian Asad Hayaud Din from Ministry Commerce apprised the audience about the state of negotiations in services sectors. Barrister Ali Zafar from Mandivwala and Zafar presented his viewpoint on Intellectual property regime in Pakistan and enforcement issues.
The seminar was attended by students and faculties from Preston and Quaid-e-Azam University, Journalists, Business community people and civil society organizations. Ms. Kashmala Tariq MNA while concluding the session emphasized upon the need to have a formal dialogue between public and private sectors on consistent and regular basis to arrive at a national consensus on vital trade issue besides raising awareness and capacity building on WTO issues. She informed that Global Trust for Human Rights and Consultant Sand Frontier would continue the present dialogue on WTO issue with business and civil society organizations and next dialogue on the issue would be held at Lahore and Karachi respectively. It was also announced that GTHR and CSF would shortly launch a website which would reflect the respective view points of government, business and civil society organizations as a mechanism for public private civil society interaction on vital trade issues. The site would also provide updated information about WTO issues for all the concerned and interested persons. Ms. Kashmala Tariq, also requested the academician and student to enhance their level of involvement and understanding of WTO issues and underlined.
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