Japanese and European business lobbies will contrive to put a wide range of issues on the agenda at a new round of World Trade Organization talks, officials at the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) said Friday.
A deal between Keidanren and the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe -- an umbrella body of 33 principal business federations from 27 European countries -- was reached during a recent trip by a Keidanren executive to Europe, they said.
The two groups will dispatch officials to a meeting of WTO ministers in Doha, Qatar, between Friday and Nov. 13 to lobby for the launching of a new round of trade talks.
Japan, which agreed that the talks would cover the services and agriculture sectors in order to clinch the last WTO round, now appears to be backsliding by insisting that the negotiations also encompass several other areas and that they be considered collectively.
The business lobbies' demands are in line with those of Japan and the European Union, which concur over how the next round of trade liberalization should be launched.
The two groups plan to send a minimal number of representatives, however, as visits by nongovernmental delegations are being heavily restricted by the Qatar government for security reasons, the officials said.
Keidanren and UNICE will mutually support the interests of their respective governments -- namely the EU's calls for the negotiation of trade-related environmental measures and transparency in competition policy and Japan's push to create investment rules, they said.