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The TRIPS Council meeting on June 4-6, in its last formal session before the Cancun Ministerial Conference in September, did not make progress towards agreement on a solution for the Paragraph 6 problem.

Under the service negotiations, India has already made its offer to 62 countries, of which 25 have responded including the United States and European Union, the sources said.

Chowdhury said: 'We demand easymovement of manpower, unrestricted market access, flexibility of rules of negotiation and exemption of LDCs from anti-dumping.''

The Cancun Ministerial meeting is mandated to take a decision by explicit consensus on the modalities of negotiations for a WTO agreement on Trade and Competition Policy.

These two documents are important to understand the process leading to Cancun. The DG and Chairman's statements clearly indicate, as stated in Aileen Kwa's recent article 'Countdown to Cancun', that WTO is in the process of becoming 'Chair driven' rather than 'member driven.'

An extremely problematic feature of this process is that the Chair states,'Clearly, the informal HODs will need to be complemented by consultations by both of us in a variety of smaller configuration to address specific issues and problems.

On 18-20 May, an international seminar was held in Delhi, India, to discuss trade, investment and development.

Last week's WTO General Council Meeting, May13, is seen as a 'historic' event by the Secretariat because for the first time, the heads of the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WTO met with the entire membership of the WTO.

Supporters of the 'mini-ministerial' process, including Zoellick and Lamy, have argued that it tends to keep top trade officials fully engaged in WTO issues and this year will help pave the way for a smooth ministerial meeting in Cancun.

'It's a fairly difficult process,' the official said. 'But we're hopeful.'