<\/p>\n
India will only finalise new deals at a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting if the United States stops blocking an agreement on a dispute settlement mechanism, New Delhi\u2019s trade minister said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Delegates are hoping for progress<\/a> on issues such as fisheries and agriculture at the WTO\u2019s 13th ministerial meeting, underway in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n But Indian minister Piyush Goyal told AFP<\/em> on the sidelines of the talks his country would not \u201cfinalise\u201d any new agreements without progress on the dispute-settlement system.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important that the first issue we should settle is that there should be an appellate body and some countries are not allowing that to happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Washington brought a WTO dispute settlement to a grinding halt<\/a> in 2019 after blocking for years the appointment of new judges to the WTO\u2019s appeals court.<\/p>\n Goyal said that \u201cthe entire working of WTO currently has come to a little bit of a standstill\u201d.<\/p>\n New agreements require full consensus between the WTO\u2019s 164 member states as per the body\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n