As the November race for the coveted leadership position of the World Trade Organization (WTO) hots up, the Geneva based body has failed to select a caretaker chief due to impasse among members, reports Reuters.
Nigeria is pushing for Ngozi Okonjo-Iwela as possible successor to the outgoing Director-General Roberto Azevedo.
However, the new leader has to be chosen by November 7.
The development, according to some analysts portends serious danger to the emergence of a leader in November due to serious disagreements among members who are yet to decide on a concensus candidate for the body.
In fact, Reuters reported on Wednesday that the WTO was unlikely to fill a leadership void after Washington’s insistence on a U.S. candidate.
The interim chief would normally have been one of the four deputy director-generals who are from China, Germany, Nigeria and the United States. The WTO said on Friday they would instead all stay on in their existing roles.
“The original effort was to try and designate an acting director-general among the four… That was not possible. We were not able to get a consensus on that,” WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told a briefing.
“The current director-general Roberto Azevedo said it was disappointing. ”
The role would be largely administrative for a couple of months. However, one potential difficulty concerns the WTO’s role in settling disputes. If parties to a case cannot agree on the composition of a three-person adjudicating panel, as is often the case, the director-general can step in to select them.
WTO members also agreed on Friday that they would select the future director-general by cutting the initial field of eight to five, then to two before a final decision is taken.
The WTO’s 164 members would be invited to select four preferred candidates in the first round running from Sept 7-16.
A “troika” of ambassadors which chairs the WTO’s main committees would determine which candidates have wide-ranging support across regions and from least developing to developed countries.
The interim chief would normally have been one of the four deputy director-generals who are from China, Germany, Nigeria and the United States. The WTO said on Friday they would instead all stay on in their existing roles.
“The original effort was to try and designate an acting director-general among the four… That was not possible. We were not able to get a consensus on that,” WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told a briefing.
“The current director-general Roberto Azevedo said it was disappointing. ”
The role would be largely administrative for a couple of months. However, one potential difficulty concerns the WTO’s role in settling disputes. If parties to a case cannot agree on the composition of a three-person adjudicating panel, as is often the case, the director-general can step in to select them.
WTO members also agreed on Friday that they would select the future director-general by cutting the initial field of eight to five, then to two before a final decision is taken.
The WTO’s 164 members would be invited to select four preferred candidates in the first round running from Sept 7-16.
A “troika” of ambassadors which chairs the WTO’s main committees would determine which candidates have wide-ranging support across regions and from least developing to developed countries.