GENEVA (AFP) — World Trade Organization member states unanimously endorsed the trade body’s current director-general Pascal Lamy to head the organization for four more years, the WTO announced.

“The General Council, on 30 April 2009, agreed to reappoint Director-General Pascal Lamy for a second term of four years as from 1 September 2009,” said the trade body in a statement on its website.
Lamy was unchallenged for the post, marking the first time that an incumbent director-general stood unopposed.
Lamy’s post was meant to have come up for election, but none of the organization’s 153 member states put forward another candidate by the deadline of December 31, 2008.
Accepting the endorsement, Lamy told member states: “I am sure that the next four years will be difficult ... but I am sure that we can get out of this tempest unscathed.”
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 underpins during his tenure.
In recent months he has also reiterated warnings against protectionism as the economic crisis has deepened.
But he has also been unable to overcome long-standing divisions between industrialized and developing nations, agricultural exporters and importers that have kept the seven year-old Doha Round of trade negotiations in stalemate.
The last WTO ministerial meeting collapsed in mid-2008 without an agreement to expand free trade by removing barriers on agriculture, industrial goods and services, and attempts to organize another ministerial in December floundered.
European Union Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton described the reappointment as “good news for the Doha Round” and for the fight against the economic turmoil.
“It is good news for the Doha Round of world trade talks, as it reflects the confidence of WTO members in the current process and Pascal Lamy’s leadership,” she said in a statement.
“This is good news in the fight against the economic downturn, as Pascal Lamy has shown leadership in the international effort to fight protectionism and get trade finance moving again,” she added.
The Frenchman, 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.
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 of Thailand, Supachai Panitchpakdi.