Quotes of the Day

Next week World Trade Organization members meet in Hong Kong to pick over thorny trade liberalization plans. Meanwhile, in Brussels, heads of government will be scraping over the European Union's next budget. As former head of the wto and erstwhile European Commissioner, Peter Sutherland knows what's at stake. The 59-year-old chairman of both BP and Goldman Sachs International talked last week to Time's Adam Smith about trade, oil, and missing golf balls.

The wto is deadlocked over rich nations' farming subsidies and access to developing world markets. how serious a crisis is this? The difficulty about trade negotiations is that they always seem to provoke crises. And the crises ultimately seem to be resolved. Therefore the credibility of crying wolf is at risk. In fact, in my view, in this case there really is a very serious danger. I doubt there will be a total breakdown in Hong Kong. I think that's less likely than an inadequate step forward.

can a deal be reached by the end of 2006? There are real dangers if, following this disagreement, there are serious residual tensions. There is a tendency in the world today to enter into more and more bilateral agreements, and people may start looking elsewhere.

Would bilateral deals be all that bad for the developing world? Yes, I think they would. The multilateral system is crucial for the developing world because it provides a transparent, rule-based system. If we get back into bilateral deals, we're back into the world where the strong dominate the weak and the application of rules and objective adjudication doesn't exist.

is the wto, with 148 members, just too unwieldy for the job? I don't think it is. The wto has delivered an enormous amount of progress. It has had an enormous effect in reducing poverty in the developing world already. It has always been able to get through very difficult, thorny issues over time, and with negotiation I think it will continue to do so. But it is certainly facing a crisis at the moment; not a crisis that I think will destroy it, but it is a crisis nonetheless. I think that the consensus rule is a necessary part of the wto in the sense that there will never be a consensus to remove it. So we might as well learn to live with it.

free trade also brings very local, harmful effects. Your message to French farmers or U.S. cotton producers? I don't think that European farmers have suffered greatly as a result of liberalization. And I don't think that we should be talking about the destruction of the [E.U.'s] Common Agricultural Policy, as some do. We should be breaking the link — which they have largely done — between production and payments. We cannot seek the destruction of the agricultural sector in Europe. What we have to do is break anti-competitive activity that damages others. I think it's quite possible to do that while maintaining a legitimate degree of anxiety about the agricultural sector, which is a key part of the world in which we live.

How do you see the wrangling over the E.U. budget? There is an unfortunate tendency to view this debate as if it was a sort of prize fight. While recognizing the difficulty for politicians, it also has to be recognized that the continuing disagreement may create disproportionate damage to the E.U. itself and to the interests of the member states concerned. Therefore it is in their interests to try to find a solution.

Shouldn't the major oil firms, enjoying big profits in a climate of high oil prices, be subject to windfall taxes? Absolutely not. I think that would be destructive. We're at a time when investment and developing the capacity of a major oil company has never been more important. Creating discriminatory tax approaches to oil companies is not the right way to proceed. The reality is that investment is required and that's what's happening.

some find the role and profits of multinational firms like BP excessive. Your message to them? The ownership of companies such as BP are largely the pension funds that everybody is talking about at the moment. So talking about oil companies as if they are separate from society is itself a huge mistake, because they are owned by society. Secondly, their power is not of the kind that is suggested. The major oil companies combined provide only a very small proportion of the total oil exploration and production in the world; over 80% of it is provided by national oil companies, owned by states that have oil within their borders.

You must be pretty stressed, juggling so many high-profile roles. What do you do to relax? I get more stressed watching rugby matches and missing golf balls!

do you think the Irish national rugby team has a shot in next year's six Nations tournament? At the moment we are not confident, but never count out Ireland.

• Former World Trade chief Peter Sutherland gives TIME the inside track