GENEVA — No one wants the World Trade Organization.

More than a month after December's WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong, which was supposed to decide on a venue for global commerce's next biennial jamboree in 2007, no city has yet volunteered to hold it.

The baggage associated with hosting such a meeting — organizing and providing accommodation and security for thousands of delegates, journalists and campaigners — is daunting enough.

That's before considering the possibility of the talks collapsing or violent protests — as happened in both Seattle and Cancun, Mexico — costing the host city financially as well as potentially tarnishing its image, as pictures of rioters fighting police beam around the globe.

"To do the last WTO meeting, it took us 18 months of preparation and cost us an incredible amount of resources," said Hong Kong Commerce Minister John Tsang. "This is not something you want to do every year."

Traditionally, a few names are considered before the WTO general counsel announces a host city for the meeting. The last two hosts, Hong Kong and Cancun, volunteered more than two years before the event. Hong Kong said it needed at least a year's advance notice of exact dates because it is was so complicated to organize the 10,000 attendees.

So with the next full-blown ministerial likely to be in late 2007, the clock is already ticking.

"Who would want to host something where there's such a high chance of failure?" said Philippe de Pontet, an analyst at the Eurasia Group in Washington. "There's a lot of negatives."

In Hong Kong, more than 1,000 people were rounded up at the end of the meeting after an anti-globalization march turned into a riot, when hundreds of protesters broke through police lines and tried to storm the convention center where ministers were still negotiating.

A survey by a Hong Kong research organization found that before the meeting, 57 percent of 500 residents asked believed the conference would benefit the territory. But afterward, that figure dropped to just 12 percent.

"Hong Kong people are not satisfied with the multimillions of dollars being spent and the inconvenience caused, without there being a real return," said Chris Farquhar of Market Insights Group, which is based in Hong Kong.

Tsang estimated that it cost the territory more than 300 million Hong Kong dollars (about $38.6 million in U.S. dollars) to host the event.

But WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell played down the significance of the trouble in Hong Kong, pointing out that it was less severe than at previous conferences. "While this was nothing to sneeze at, it was certainly less than on previous occasions," Rockwell said.

The Seattle meeting in 1999 saw the worst trouble, when WTO talks collapsed following five days of anti-globalization riots that hurt the city's image and caused $3 million in damages. Honolulu made a bid to host the 1999 WTO ministerial, but lost out to Seattle.

In Cancun, demonstrators battled with police and threw objects and even raw sewage in an attempt to crack a security perimeter around the meeting.

Officials say Singapore — a WTO standby — could host the 2007 meeting, while Qatar may also volunteer. Geneva remains the default location, but nothing is confirmed.