India and United Kingdom have decided to work together at the World Trade Organisation to end the stalemate on the issue of Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and public health.Commerce minister Arun Shourie and UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Patricia Hewitt in a meeting on Tuesday decided to join hands to push for a solution. Request on imported spirit rejected New Delhi: India has rejected UK’s request to reduce duty on imported spirits saying that it is not possible due to revenue and other considerations. After meeting the delegation, the Commerce Minister Arun Shourie said that ‘we have expressed our inability to drastically cut down duty on imported spirits as several states have revenue considerations’. He said that ‘duty on imported spirits has in declined to 300-400%. ENS The United States has opposed the draft decision on the implementation of the public health agreement prepared by the chairman of TRIPs Council as it wants to restrict the coverage of diseases under the agreement to just infectious diseases and epidemics. India, African countries and a number of other developing countries want the agreement to cover the entire list of diseases mentioned in the Doha Declaration. Later, Shourie said UK had proposed to work on persuading the US again. There were suggestions of finalising a list of diseases, exceptions to which could be included in case of exigencies at the request of organisations like World Health Organisation.
