Global trade talks reached a boiling point last year when it met at a ministerial-level meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva and fell apart without reachching a concordant note after major countries could not agree on how to tackle the susidy cut problem and tariffs in agriculture as a result of which the meeting had to be called off a day earlier because no breakthrough could be made in the process of agriculture issue. The issue of liberalisation of industrial products also got a setback. The WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said, "There has been no progress, so we are in a crisis, we have to admit it.
About 60 ministers of tradr and agriculture from different memmber countries came to round table to discuss the issue of 'modalities' for cutting agricultural tariffs and subsidies and industrial tariffs for certain products and for some countries. It was held under The WTO's Doha programme in 2001 which also had ended in chaos due to non-cooperation of countries like US. This was again rescheduled in 2004 but went through many failed deadlines. The Hong Kong Ministerial conference in Dec. 2005 gave some new directions but new deadlines also ended without basic agreement. In the last ministerial-level meeting Lamy had been asked by the WTO members to facilitate and catalyse more talks to see whether a new deadline in July last year could be met to get out of this rut.