Political Quotes

“Let me just clarify a few other things about what is being proposed. The earlier "Dear Colleague" letter that Members received from some of the sponsors, talked about this is dealing with the multilateral agreement on investment. In fact, it talked about the role that the multilateral agreement, or MIA as we will call it, has with the World Trade Organization, or WTO. But there is not any link between the MIA and the WTO. To say there is a link between those two is simply incorrect. The fact is, however, that the new multilateral agreement on investments builds upon 1,000 bilateral investment agreements that are already in force around the world. All of those agreements have some kind of investor dispute settlement mechanism in them. Most of them are done through the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. The center has been in existence since 1966. It is one of the primary forces for settling these kinds of disputes. We have to have something to settle disputes when investors get into some kind a dispute. This is the first comprehensive multilateral investment agreement that we have had, and in that sense it is new, but it is certainly high time.”