|TOP|Following the recent collapse of global trade talks amongst wealthy countries, Christian organisations stepped forward, claiming that the result strikes a terrible blow at poor people and puts the entire World Trade Organisation in jeopardy.

The cancellation came after two days of discussions among negotiators from the United States, the European Union, Japan, Brazil, India and Australia, when the director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, formally suspended the talks.

According to Christian Aid, the failure of the trade talks removed the single most important weapon in the fight against global poverty.

“It seems that the selfish intransigence of the US and Europe has finally wrecked any chance of a successful outcome for these trade talks which were meant to help developing countries,” said Dr Claire Melamed, Christian Aid’s senior trade analyst.

“Poor countries desperately needed a fair trade deal so that they could grow out of poverty and not rely on hand outs. This tawdry squabbling at the rich world’s high table has now put paid to that. It is a disgraceful outcome of which leaders of the European Union and America should be ashamed.”

She added: “How they can look themselves in the eye after this no one knows. It is no good flicking a few crumbs of comfort via aid and debt relief front with one hand while the other is slowly squeezing the economic life-blood out of poor countries.”

Dr Melamed added that the future of the WTO was now in serious doubt.

|AD|“How can this allegedly great trading organisation continue to function when it cannot perform the basics of what it was designed for? This an extremely serious matter and I suspect we are back to the drawing board on trade – with all the damaging consequences that will have for poor countries,” she said.

In addition, Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund(SCIAF), CAFOD, Tearfund and other church and development groups have expressed disappointment at the decision to suspend World Trade Organisation talks, which could have lifted millions from poverty.

Chris Hegarty, advocacy manager at SCIAF, said: “This news will send a chill through the hundreds of thousands of Scots who called to Make Poverty History last year.”

Hegarty continued: “A fairer international trading system is one of the most important weapons we have in the fight against poverty – it has the power to transform the lives of the 1.2 billion who live on less than one dollars per day and to present sustainable solutions that would enable the poor to work their way out of poverty. These WTO negotiations represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do just that.”