Chief Executive, Secretary, Dr. Supachai, Ambassador Amina Mohammed, Ministers, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It has been reported to me that someone once referred to WTO Ministerial Conferences as “medieval”. I don’t know who that was — but that person surely had not seen Hong Kong and the way it has organized this Conference.
Rather than medieval, the sight of the skyscrapers of the Central District that we can see, from the concourse outside, and the venue for this meeting, are closer to futuristic science-fiction than they are to the Middle Ages. And I therefore would like to express my gratitude to the authorities and to the people of Hong Kong for the arrangements they have made for this Conference. This in fact is a tribute to the city’s tradition of hospitality and efficiency.
Before coming here to Hong Kong, you received a Draft Ministerial Text, together with the letter that Ambassador Amina Mohammed and I sent together to Secretary Tsang. And in that letter we explained the conditions under which that document was approved by the General Council of the WTO on December 2, in addition to some questions that could help you guide your work. Now this draft brought no surprises — there was no magic involved.
Last September, when I took office as Director-General of the WTO, I said that I didn’t have a magic wand, and I’m sure that you remember that. Well, in the meantime, I have kindly been provided with a magic wand. Here it is. But I’m afraid it is not working very well yet. And to tell you the truth, I think that this is the type of magic that only works if everyone believes in it. But that’s not the case now, or not yet. So let’s set aside the fantasy and instead, let’s endeavor to combine our hopes and our strengths, your hopes and your strengths well, to advance the negotiations so that they can be completed in the year 2006.
Furthermore, as I said, you received the draft, and this being the case, I do not need to present you today with another work plan for this week. This Ministerial Conference is your Conference — and therefore it is in your hands and it is in the hands of your negotiators to work as best you can.
I think rather than to repeat this work schedule, this agenda, I would like to have a quick 360-degree-look at the WTO. Let’s look at its past, its present and its future.
But let’s never forget that the WTO is a system — a rather complex one, or be it, with its idiosyncrasies, its strengths and its weaknesses. It has its assets and its liabilities. And let’s not forget furthermore that this system is your system. You are stakeholders in the WTO, and in your quality as managers of these assets that you own jointly, it is your task — and your interests — to improve the WTO.
So I swear you are the heirs of nearly 60 years of tradition and trade negotiations. You are the heirs of a remarkable set of rules and decisions, and an impressive battery of legal interpretations. Furthermore, you have inherited a well-oiled machine which oversees and ensures the implementation of a balanced system of rights and obligations. Therefore, as delegates, you have every reason to be proud of the past achievements of your collective endeavor. So much for the past.
The current state of affairs is somewhat more heterogeneous. On the one hand, the day-to-day and dispute settlement activities are doing relatively well. Although the number of disputes has risen considerably, most of the decisions are respected and implemented, without recourse to retaliation — which speaks for the credibility of the dispute settlement mechanism. Only a handful of the more than 300 disputes submitted to the WTO since its creation have not been resolved.
The negotiation part of your activities, on the other hand, could certainly, certainly be improved. There is also a lot of room for improvement in the public acceptance of the WTO, as there is in its marketing activities. The WTO and the crowds in and certainly outside this building will remind this to you with a bit of sound and sometimes a bit of fury, that WTO is not the most popular international organization around, to say the least.
Even if it is famous throughout the world, the WTO is a very small business: its budget for 2006 is 140 million US — five times less than the budget of FIFA — the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, for example, and almost ten times less than the budget of one famous NGO! I would not cloak, not to take it aside. So I will certainly have to use a bit of your magic to see if in the future we can get a more powerful engine for the WTO car, which is, as you know, getting bigger and bigger, and now includes two newcomers, Saudi Arabia and Tonga, which I’m happy to welcome to this Conference.
So, past, present, future. What about the future of WTO? Well, it started in Doha in 2001 and it is up to you to decide, in this assembly, how you wish to fashion the years to come. If the WTO is to maintain and increase its current activities, then you must take a further step and commit yourselves to a new investment in the improvement of its rules, through the success of the current negotiations.
Now how do you decide on this collective investment? The WTO decision-making process, as we all know is, let’s say, difficult. The difficulty stems from the fact that all stakeholders — all of you — have decided that you have exactly the same right, no matter how big or small, no matter how powerful or weak, no matter how rich or poor you are. You all have the same right to speak, the right to agree, the right to disagree. In sum, in spite of all criticism, the WTO decision-making process is democratic. If it were different, if it was not as democratic as it is, then I can tell you the negotiations would probably be easier. But they would not be as legitimate. Reaching agreement in the WTO is difficult because it is done bottom-up — and it is good it is so. It takes more time, it is more burdensome, it is more cumbersome, but I am convinced it remains the best way to take decisions that impact directly the lives of billions of people.
In short, you should indeed be proud of this healthy and democratic common institution. But like any stakeholder, you should also look beyond your immediate needs, you should try and think prospectively, you should care about the WTO’s future.
Before I conclude, let me tell you a little secret. And I learnt this secret in visiting the library of the WTO. There is in this library an apocryphal and funny Secretariat guide to the language of trade negotiators in the old GATT. Now this guide tells you that, in those years, when negotiators said “Mr Chairman, we seek a balanced agreement”, what they really meant was “this agreement had better contain everything we demand”; when the negotiators said in those times “we have demonstrated flexibility”, they really meant “we have successfully concealed our intransigence”; and when the negotiators announced “we are prepared to make our contribution to an ambitious outcome”, they really meant “we will only support agreements where others make all the concessions, and we make none”! This attitude, as we all very well know, is part of our past.
This is the past because today, what we really need are negotiators that are bold, open-minded and prepared to take some risks, as successful shareholders and stakeholders do it. Ministers, we all know that, often face the difficult task of explaining to national constituencies that they gain something in negotiations, even if the negotiating process is not over. The many people who benefit from open trade are usually politically silent, whereas those fewer who are affected by opening trade are politically much louder. So we all understand the need of each and every delegation to take home some gain from trade negotiations to rebalance this asymmetry between winners and losers.
The reality is that the true magic of these negotiations is to achieve results where all participants are winners, all will be able to declare victory. But for that, some risks have to be taken. A popular Chinese proverb says “If you don’t go into the cave of the tiger, how will you get its cub?” — in other words: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Repeating well-known positions, using negotiators’ language, refusing to understand the reasons of counterparts, avoiding any risks — including political risks — will get us nowhere. Worse, it might put to risk valuable assets which you have amassed with so much effort in the past. On the other hand, taking a bit of risk — a calculated risk — will mean a chance for improved rules, for a level playing field, for free and fair trade — in short, the best chance for development. And development is, and will remain to be the backbone of the Doha Round.
So short of a magic wand, I can only give you my best advice: be open-minded, be bold, be courageous. Enter the cave of the tiger and leave Hong Kong with a prize in your hands. And this prize is the assurance that the Doha Development Round has a real chance of coming to a happy end.
And so now, this time has come to us to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We have to listen carefully and make decisions. And we must not only think of ourselves, we must also focus on our children and grandchildren.
Good luck and thank you for your attention.
(Full text of the remarks by Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the WTO at the 6thWTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong on December 13, 2005, as transcribed)
参考译文：
（曾荫权）行政长官，（曾俊华）司长，素帕猜博士，阿米那·穆罕穆德大使，各位部长，诸位阁下，女士们、先生们：
据我所知有人曾经把世贸组织部长会议称作“中世纪会议”。我不知道是谁说的，不过他肯定没见过香港也不知道它是如何组织这次会议的。
与中世纪完全不同，香港中环的摩天大楼，从外面走道到此次会议的会场，无不接近未来派科幻小说里的景象。我想感谢香港政府以及人民为大会做出的精心安排，它彰显了这个城市好客以及高效的优良传统。
到香港之前，你们都收到了一份部长文本草案和一封我与阿米那·穆罕穆德大使一同发给曾司长的信，信中我们解释了12月2日委员会通过该文件的条件，并提出了帮助指导各位工作的问题。草案中没有什么特别的内容，没有什么魔法。
去年9月，我担任世贸组织总干事一职时说过，我没有魔杖，你们肯定都记得。同时，我又被赋予了魔杖。它就在此——不过恐怕它还没很好地生效。坦白地说，我想这种魔力只有在大家都相信它的时候才会起作用，但现在的情形并非如此，或者说还没出现这种情形。那么，让我们丢开美好的幻想，而把我们的希望和力量联合起来，把你们的希望和你们的力量联合起来，来推进谈判并促使它在2006年内完成。
此外，既然大家收到了草案，我就不再陈述这个星期的工作计划了。这个部长会议是你们的会议，它掌握在你们的手中，你们谈判者的手中。
我不再重复工作计划和议程，我想与你们一同360度地看看世贸组织。我们看看它的过去、现在以及将来。
我们要永远铭记世贸组织是一个体系，十分复杂，夹杂着各种习性、长处和短处、财产以及责任，也不要忘记这个体系是属于你们的。你们是世贸组织的利益攸关者，也是你们所共同拥有的资产的管理素质的利益攸关者。你们的任务以及利益在于推进世贸组织。
我认为你们是拥有60年历史的贸易谈判传统的继承者，这60年里我们通过了许多了不起的规定与决议，并建立了一个优秀的法律阐释机构。此外，你们还继承了良好的机制，它监督和保证了权利与义务均衡的系统的运行。因此，作为代表，你们有足够的理由为你们用勤劳换取的成就感到骄傲。以上就是对过去工作的回顾。
当今的形势则更加复杂。一方面，对日常事务以及对分歧的解决进行得相对顺利。尽管分歧的数目大量增加，但大部分的决议都受到尊重并且得到实施，没有报仇行动的参与，这显示了争端解决机制的可靠。自世贸组织成立以来，只有300多宗争端尚未解决。
另一方面，你们的谈判活动肯定还能进步。无论是民众对世贸组织的接受程度还是世贸的市场活动都有很大的改进空间。不管是坐在这里面的人还是会场外面的人群都会用呼声甚至愤怒提醒你们，世贸组织还不是世界上最受欢迎的国际组织，哪怕退一步来说。
即使世界闻名，世贸组织仍是个小组织：2006年的预算仅有1亿4000万美金，是国际足联预算金额的六分之一，跟一个著名的非政府组织的预算比起来的话，可能只有其十一分之一，我不会掩盖，也不会回避。我当然期望借助你们的魔力来为我们寻找一个更强有力的引擎，因为我们正变得越来越大，刚刚就加入了两个新成员，沙特阿拉伯和汤加，我很高兴欢迎它们来参会。
过去，现在，将来。世贸组织的将来如何？世贸的将来开始于2001年开始的多哈回合，其进展就由与会的你们来决定了，视乎你们如何计划今后的几年。如果世贸组织要保持和增加现有的活动，那你们必须在现有谈判取得的成功的基础上，进一步投入到对其规则的完善工作中。
你们如何决定这种集体的努力呢？世贸组织的决议过程，如大家所知，很困难。这种困难来自于你们所有利益攸关者都认为自己有相同的权利——不管你们代表的国家是大或小，强或弱，富有或穷困，你们都有权利发言、同意或反对。总之，尽管有各种批评，世贸组织的决策过程是民主的。但如果决策过程有所不同，如果它不那么民主，我想谈判过程也许能变得轻松些。然而它也会不那么合法。在世贸组织达成一致很难是因为它是自下而上的，这样做有好处。但这需要更多时间，更繁重与棘手，但我坚信它仍是我们决策的最好途径，因为我们的决策关系到数十亿人民。
简而言之，你们应当为这个健康和民主的共同机构感到骄傲。如其他任何利益攸关者一样，你们不能只看到眼前利益，你们要有远见，要关心未来。
在我结束之前，我想跟你们分享一个小秘密，我是在参观世贸组织图书馆时发现这个秘密的。有一本杜撰的而且十分滑稽的关贸总协定贸易谈判者语言指南，上面说在过去，如果谈判者说“主席先生，我们寻求一个平衡的协议”，那么他的真正意思其实是“这个协议最好包含了我们需要的一切”；如果当年谈判者说“我们显示出了灵活性”，那他实际是说“我们隐藏了我们不妥协的态度”；如果谈判者声称“我们已经准备好为伟大成果做出贡献了”，他的意思是“我们只会支持其他人做出让步而我们绝不让步的协议”。大家都很清楚，这种态度已经过时。
这些都是过去，因为今天我们需要的是大胆、开放、有冒险精神谈判者，正如成功的股东和利益攸关者都具备这些素质。部长们常常要面对向国家选民们解释在谈判中所获成果的艰巨任务，即使谈判过程尚未结束。从开放贸易中获利的人们通常都在政治事务上默不作声，然而那些受其影响的少数人在政治上声音更响亮。我们都明白每个代表团都需要把贸易谈判所取得的收益带回家，去重新平衡胜方和败方的对称。
事实是谈判真正的魔力是要让参与谈判的每一方都成为赢家，让他们每一人都获得胜利。如果要实现它的话，我们就得冒些险。一句中国谚语如是说：“不入虎穴，焉得虎子？”也就是说：不冒险就什么都得不到。依旧采取众所周知的立场、使用旧的谈判者的语言、拒绝理解对方的原因、避开风险包括政治风险，这些无助于我们的发展。更甚的是，它们也许会威胁到我们过去辛辛苦苦积累的珍贵财产。另一方面，冒一点风险，一点计划风险，意味着给予制度改善一个机会，给予平等竞争一个机会，给予自由和公平贸易一个机会。简而言之，它是给予发展最好的机会。而发展正是，也将继续是多哈会合的支柱。
我没有魔杖，只能给你们一些我的最好的建议：要开明、大胆、勇敢。进入虎穴并在离开香港的时候给你们自己一份大礼，就是保证多哈发展会合会完满结束。
所以，现在我们要卷起袖子工作了。我们必须仔细倾听和决策。我们不能只想着自己，还要为我们的子孙后代着想。
祝大家好运！谢谢！
（2005年12月13日，世贸组织总干事拉米在WTO第六届部长级会议上的讲话，全文，根据录音材料整理）
