Article: New Trade Group Sets Talks on Labor Rights ; Developing Nations Agree to Discuss Issue

Representatives of the developing world agreed yesterday to put the divisive issue of labor rights on the agenda of the new World Trade Organization, the powerful new international body that is intended to regulate global commerce beginning next year.

U.S. officials acknowledged that the agreement, reached in Geneva, is only a first step toward resolving a decades-old schism between the industrial nations and developing countries over labor standards.

Leaders of developing nations remain fearful that a campaign to expand labor rights could create a back-door means of barring their low-wage products from the consumer markets of rich nations.

While negotiators for Brazil, Malaysia, ...

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