Interview with Indian trade minister causes a stir

India’s new trade minister, Anand Sharma, kicked up a storm by commenting in an interview on June 15 with Reuters that “the impasse has been broken” over the long-running Doha round of world trade talks. Indian newspapers leapt on the interview, branding his comments “rather odd”, “surprising” and “startling”, and one commentator saw it as evidence of policy contradictions within the newly elected government. A debate show on CNBC also featured the Reuters article, a sign of the sensitivity still surrounding any attempts in India to move ahead with the stalled World Trade Organisation talks. As the buzz continued over his comments, Sharma went back to Reuters for a second interview a few days later, this time qualifying his statement: “I think we are racing along too fast,” he said. “What I said was that the impasse has to be broken, must be broken …”