But even as these efforts are gathering momentum, The Financial Times, which used to be a staunch supporter of multilateral free trade, dropped a cluster bomb on Doha, even congratulating itself that, in 2008 (when a ministerial meeting failed to reach closure), it “argued that leaders should admit the negotiations were dead.” But if skeptics forget Mark Twain’s famous response to a mistaken obituary – “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” – were the negotiators who have continued to work since then akin to Gogol’s “dead souls?”