* End of six-month leadership gap at WTO
* Okonjo-Iweala to prioritise health, fisheries
* WTO to hold next ministerial meeting end-2021
(Updates with speech from new director-general)
By Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop
GENEVA, March 1 (Reuters) - The new chief of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) urged its member states on Monday to work
with pharmaceutical companies to license more COVID-19 vaccine
manufacturing in developing countries in order to triple global
production.
"People are dying in poor countries," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
said on her first day in office. "The world has a normal
capacity of production of 3.5 billion doses of vaccines and we
now seek to manufacture 10 billion doses."
Her call comes as a group of developing countries led by
South Africa and India seek to waive intellectual property
rights for COVID-19 drugs and vaccines, a move opposed by the
United States, the European Union and other wealthy nations.
Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO's first female and first African
director-general, said that, while this debate continued,
companies must be encouraged to open up and license more viable
manufacturing sites now in developing countries.
In a speech to the WTO's 164 member states, she said there
was an upcoming world manufacturing convention and urged the
start of dialogue with manufacturers associations.
After a long campaign that was derailed in the latter stages
by a Trump administration veto, the 66-year-old Nigerian was
confirmed as boss last month, pledging to "forget business as
usual" at the WTO, which is struggling to strike new deals and
whose arbitration functions are paralysed. L1N2KL1GE
"READY TO GO"
"It feels great. I am coming into one of the most important
institutions in the world and we have a lot of work to do. I
feel ready to go," Okonjo-Iweala told a reporter on arrival at
the WTO's lakeside Geneva headquarters where she donned a mask
and elbow-bumped officials.
The former Nigerian finance and foreign minister aims to
revive the global trade watchdog ahead of a major year-end
meeting, saying she feared the world was leaving the WTO behind.
WTO delegates agreed to hold the next major ministerial
conference in Geneva from Nov. 29. L5N2KZ2RL
The meeting was originally due to be held in Kazakhstan in
2020 but was delayed due to the pandemic. Okonjo-Iweala has said
she hopes ministers at the year-end meeting can finalise deals
on ending fisheries subsidies and reforms for the WTO's top
appeals body which was paralysed by the Trump administration.
Since the WTO director-general holds few executive powers,
some analysts question her ability to revive the body in the
face of so many challenges, including persistent U.S.-China
trade tensions and growing protectionism heightened by the
pandemic.