Switzerland is represented at the talks by Economics Minister Pascal Couchepin. “Our position is that what is good for the multilateral trade system increases the legal security, and therefore, is good for Switzerland,” says Luzius Wasescha, a senior official at the Economics Ministry. He says Switzerland should provide developing countries and emerging markets with financial and technical assistance. But he rejects proposals for unilateral concessions for all developing countries.

The Swiss Business Federation, economiesuisse, for its part, is calling on WTO members to make agriculture, investment and competition rules more flexible. Rudolf Ramsauer, the director of economiesuisse, admits that the federation’s stance is more ambitious than the Swiss government’s position and he believes that it will be difficult to reach a deal at the Doha conference.

Marianne Hochuli of the non-governmental development aid group, the Bern Declaration, opposes a new round of trade talks: “Liberalisation is not always a good way for poor people. Take farmers, for them trade liberalisation can prevent them from earning their lives.”

To an economist, that is a strange, even economically illiterate attitude. The biggest beneficiaries of a loosening of agricultural tariffs will be exactly those farmers in developing countries who cannot now export into protected areas like the EU. It's the farmers of the EU, Japan and the US, led by France, who are against liberalisation, and who may wreck the chances of a new round.

The generally favourable attitude of the Swiss reflects the minor and diminishing part that agriculture plays in the country's economy. For Switzerland, with its heavyweight pharmaceutical sector, the most contentious aspect of the talks will be a focus on intellectual property.

One of the most controversial issues to be discussed at Doha is the protection of industrial patents under an agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips). Wasescha says the existing regulations protecting industrial patents are flexible enough to allow the poorest countries to get better access to patented products, including pharmaceuticals, to combat the spread of diseases such as Aids. However, non-governmental organisations have argued that by opposing an easing of the rules the industrialised world and the business community are putting profit before health.