Tuesday, January 18 2005 16:27 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Geneva: World leaders must show more commitment to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and hold a summit every five years to bolster support for the body, a panel set up to examine the WTO's future said today (Jan 18, 2005).

The consultative board, led by former WTO director general Peter Sutherland, said in a report that the often criticised global free trade body needed "more intensive political involvement".

"Institutions can fail ... through neglect," he warned in the report by the panel of eight leading economists, trade experts and officials.

Sutherland, who is also a former European Union Trade Commissioner, said the rules-based free trade system governed by the WTO's 148 member states was an essential building block in global economic affairs.

"It will be increasingly apparent that to undo or resile from this system will carry a significant price," he added.

The report said: "A summit of world leaders should be held in the WTO every five years," in order to "reinforce commitment to the multilateral trading system".

After the failure of high profile WTO ministerial meetings in the US city of Seattle in 1999, and in Cancun in 2003, which were meant to spur the expansion of the free trade system, meetings of trade ministers should be held annually instead of every two years, the report added.

The panel also advocated the formation of a rotating core group of up to 30 nations in the WTO, which would regularly set the political direction for the negotiations on expanding trade liberalisation.