India, U.S. see progress in delayed trade talks

PARIS, May 16 (Reuters) Progress is being made towards a global trade deal, India and the United States said on Wednesday as trade powers prepared a new push for a breakthrough in the long-delayed negotiations.

Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said he was encouraged by technical-level discussions this month between the United States, India, the European Union and Brazil, four key members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The so-called G4, which represents a wide range of trade interests at the 150-state WTO, plans a series of ministerial meetings over the next few weeks, starting with talks in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

''The U.S. signals have been positive at the officials' level and we are now looking forward for these positive signals to be converted into numbers,'' Nath told reporters at a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

On the crucial issue of farm trade, Washington is under pressure to offer far deeper subsidy cuts. But it has made further moves conditional on countries such as India opening up their markets more to U.S. agricultural goods, which New Delhi says would hurt millions of poor local farmers.

As part of any breakthrough between the four, the EU must lower farm tariffs while Brazil and India would have to agree to cut duties on industrial goods. But none of the four powers has yet spelled out publicly what more it is prepared to do.

''From being at a standstill, there are steps forward. They are not leaps forward,'' Nath said.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, also attending the OECD meeting, said negotiators were ''making some real progress'' but there were still ''significant gaps in terms of ambition'' and the time for trade-offs had not yet come.

There have been advances on agricultural issues such as farm subsidies and cutting farm import tariffs in rich countries but there was less progress in getting developing countries to open up their markets, she said.

European officials have recently said they are worried that the focus on farm issues is distracting from talks on cutting tariffs for industrial goods, such as cars and chemicals.

WTO chief Pascal Lamy says the WTO must achieve a draft deal in the five-year-old Doha trade round before the Geneva-based organisation takes its annual August break.

Without a blueprint in July, there will be no chance of clinching a full treaty on lowering barriers to business across the globe by the end of the year, and that in turn could trigger the final collapse of the negotiations, Lamy has warned.

On Tuesday, he said failure at the WTO could make it harder for countries around the world to work together on other issues, chief among them fighting climate change.

REUTERS DKS RS1901