Senior government officials meeting in Paris agreed to a pause in their work on an agreement to tackle market-distorting measures in the shipbuilding industry. The pause will provide participants with an opportunity to explore the scope for advancing the talks in key areas and to strengthen the industry support required for the negotiations to succeed. The decision was made at a high level meeting of the Special Negotiating Group on a new Shipbuilding Agreement. Attended by officials from 26 OECD and non-OECD economies, the meeting was called by the Chairman, Switzerland’s Ambassador to the OECD, Wilhelm Jaggi, in an effort to deal with a number of key issues where blockages had developed in the course of the normal negotiating process.