The World Trade Organization (WTO) has postponed the appointment of its new Director General (DG) until further notice, further delaying the announcement of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as DG.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports the Chair of the General Council, Dr David Walker made this known in a statement, being a communication to the General Council on Friday.
The statement acknowledged Okonjo-Iweala as the most preferred candidate for the WTO DG job but said that the meeting for her announcement has been rescheduled without a date fixed yet.
Walker cited reasons that including the health situation and current events, delegations will not be in a position to take a formal decision on November 9 as earlier scheduled.
The statement reads: “As you know, at the meeting of Heads of Delegation on 28 October, in accordance with the Procedures for the Appointment of Directors-General adopted by the General Council and contained in WT/L/509 and the agreed modalities for Phase 3 of the process in JOB/GC/243, I and the Facilitators – Ambassador Dacio Castillo, Chair of the Dispute Settlement Body and Ambassador Harald Aspelund, Chair of the Trade Policy Review Body – reported the outcome of the third and final round of consultations in the process of appointment of the next Director-General and announced that we were submitting the name of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the candidate most likely to attract consensus and recommending her appointment by the General Council as the next Director-General of the WTO. My statement can be found in JOB/GC/247.
“I also announced that a Special Meeting of the General Council would be convened to take a formal decision on the appointment of the next Director-General and a meeting was subsequently convened for 9 November for this purpose with an Airgram circulated to delegations in WTO/AIR/GC/33 which, as you have seen, contains a single item concerning the Appointment of the next Director-General.
“It has come to my attention that for reasons including the health situation and current events, delegations will not be in a position to take a formal decision on 9 November.
“I am therefore postponing this meeting until further notice during which period I will continue to undertake consultations with delegations”.