Since the draft compromise emerged in the media a month ago, pressure from civil society groups has been rising for the parties – the United States, the European Union, India and South Africa – to walk away from the deal.
“People are saying the text is now being rejected. It is not true,” Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters by telephone. Okonjo-Iweala, who took over the top job a year ago with a mandate to reinvigorate the 27-year-old institution, has been brokering the talks for the past few months in an effort to break a more than year-long stalemate at the WTO.