Qatar is known nowadays chiefly as home of al-Jazeera, Osama bin Laden's favourite television station. But next weekend the Gulf state will host hundreds of trade ministers and officials at the biennial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Security concerns have slimmed delegations and scared off hangers on (Qatar is only 1,000 miles from Afghanistan and full of workers from other Muslim countries). But, so far, none of the WTO'S 142 members has pulled out. Their goal is to launch a new trade round, successor to the Uruguay round that ended in 1994 and created the WTO.
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