Quite what chance the World Trade Organisation has of mediating on the various sensitive trade issues confronting it is difficult to guess, given that it has spent the guts of 1999 failing to select a new leader for the organisation itself.

The deadlock has even defeated the man asked to break it. Ambassador Ali Mchumo of Tanzania threw in the towel this week, writing to trade envoys in Geneva to say that neither of the two leading candidates had managed to win consensus support.

The envoys have been unable to decide on whether former New Zealand prime minister Michael Moore or Thai Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi should head the WTO, where decisions are taken by consensus rather than vote.

The WTO has been without a chief since Renato Ruggiero of Italy retired on April 30th. Diplomats say the crisis threatens to hamper preparations for the launch at the end of the year of a new round of global trade liberalisation negotiations.