With time running out, they took the five most contentious issues on the proposed agenda and set up a working party to look into each of them. Slicing up the agenda made striking such bargains harder, as negotiators discovered as the talks ran into the sand on the final day. The moral here is that taking the easy way out can get you out of a mess in the short term, but can land you in even bigger trouble later on. The fourth problem was caused by Bill Clinton. WTO talks are no different from any other negotiations.
Participants turn up demanding all sorts of things, but are prepared to settle for less.
Everybody knows that this is a ritual to be gone through before a deal can be struck, and the skill is in getting as much of your package as you possibly can. The one thing the Americans wanted was a WTO working party to look into global labour standards, a key issue for the trade union bankrollers of the Democratic party in next year's presidential election. Developing countries were highly suspicious of America's motives, seeing the link between trade and labour standards as back-door protectionism. However, in return the poorest 48 countries were to be offered duty-free access to the US, the European Union and Japan. But Clinton hardened up the US position on labour standards while weakening the offer on duty-free access.