The beleaguered World Trade Organization said its members failed to agree Friday on appointing one of the four deputy directors-general as an interim chief – underlining the deadlock in the institution. “We were not able to get a consensus,” WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told a press conference. According to WTO guidelines, one of the organisation’s four deputy chiefs should be chosen to hold the reins until the next director-general can take over. The deputy DGs are Yonov Frederick Agah of Nigeria, Karl Brauner of Germany, Yi Xiaozhun of China and Alan Wolff of the United States. On Thursday, a Geneva-based trade diplomat said that failure to agree on an interim leader would not spark a “practical crisis”, because the four deputies would simply carry on handling the areas they are already in charge of.

Source: Punch July 31, 2020 18:33 UTC