GENEVA (AFP) — The World Trade Organisation said Monday that its current director-general, Pascal Lamy, would be unopposed in his bid to renew his mandate when it expires in August this year.
None of the organisation's 153 member states put forward another candidate by the deadline of December 31, 2008, WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told AFP.
Lamy, who took the helm of the global trade watchdog in September 2005, announced last November that he would aim to take on a second term in office when his current four-year mandate expires in August.
The WTO's members are due to elect the next chief at a meeting of the trade watchdog's ruling General Council next month.
Lamy is "practically assured" of re-election, a source close to the WTO said.
It is the first time that an incumbent director-general will stand unopposed, the source added.
Previous leadership races at the global trade body have often been fractious affairs that highlighted splits between rich and poor countries or between Europeans and the United States.
In 1999, the wrangling was only resolved by a compromise decision to appoint the two outstanding candidates on a shortened term of three years each.
Former New Zealand prime minister Mike Moore was followed by the former deputy prime minister minister of Thailand, Supachai Panitchpakdi.
Lamy, a former French government official and the European Union's trade commissioner until 2004, has championed the rules-based global free trade system the WTO represents during his tenure and warned against protectionism.
But he has also been unable so far to overcome long-standing divisions between industralised and developing nations, agricultural exporters and importers that have kept the seven year-old Doha Round of trade negotiations in stalemate.
A WTO ministerial meeting collapsed in mid-2008 without an agreement to expand free markets to agriculture, industrial goods and services, and attempts to organise another ministerial in December floundered.
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