At the World Trade Organization in Geneva, life is beginning to imitate art, at least if you consider the work of Monty Python’s Flying Circus to be art.
For devotees of the madcap 1970s English comedy troupe, it is high art indeed.
WTO director general Pascal Lamy, with his refusal to conclude that the current Doha Round of negotiations is failing, is starting to resemble one of the most famous Python characters, the Black Knight.
For the uninitiated, in a scene during the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur reaches a bridge he must cross but finds it guarded by a fearsome Black Knight.
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Arthur tries to recruit him as a Round Table knight at Camelot and when Black Knight refuses, a bloody sword fight ensues.
One arm is severed. “Tis but a scratch. I’ve had worse.”
The second arm goes. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
Arthur is incredulous as the Black Knight starts to kick him. Both legs are severed.
“We’ll call it a draw.”
As King Arthur starts to ride across the bridge, the torso begins to taunt him. “Running away, are you? Come back you yellow (expletive deleted). I’ll bite your legs off.”
It was brilliant satire on refusal to accept reality.
Lamy, thankfully minus the blood and missing limbs, is in danger of morphing into a Black Knight.
WTO talks are in the ninth year of what was supposed to be a three-year negotiation launched in 2001 at Doha, Qatar.
There has been no significant progress since mid-2008. Boosters say the majority of work has been done, as reflected in texts now on the table, but what remains is all the heavy lifting and those texts are not accepted.
Significant politically sensitive compromises are needed in areas as complex and potentially damaging as the right for developing countries to keep higher levels of protection than developed countries, domestic subsidy levels, market access, sensitive product protection and the future of state trading agencies.
And that’s just in agriculture.
Other areas including services and non-agricultural goods market access have their own issues.
Despite lots of high level political talk about wanting to see a deal, governments have shown no inclination to make compromises that could rile up some of their voters.
Yet after five days of consultations in Geneva last week, Lamy remarkably emerged optimistic about the talks. He saw a renewed will to succeed, no defeatism and a chance to “weave all the strings into an overall package.”
Come back to the negotiating table, you cowards, or I’ll bite your legs off.
Of course, Lamy is trying to lead them over the bridge, not block their passage.
So here’s a modest proposal. Instead of probing for signs life in this dying parrot (another Python skit), he should issue an ultimatum.
Countries have until, say, November 2011 to seal a deal or he pulls the plug.
Perhaps a 10th anniversary hard deadline would transform this farce into a drama.
It could even let Lamy shed the black armour.
