Envoys make fresh bid to get world trade deal

By Staff
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GENEVA, Sept 3 (Reuters) Trade negotiators launched a new effort today to reach a key deal on farm subsidies in a move that could help usher in by the end of the year a global deal on overall trade, not just agricultural produce.

Speaking after the first meeting following a summer break, farm talks chairman Crawford Falconer told reporters the discussions had been ''practical and business-like.'' He added: ''I'm encouraged by that.'' ''They are all in a mood to roll their sleeves up and get to work,'' Falconer, New Zealand's ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said.

The farm subsidy talks are one of the two key planks of a potential overall WTO pact that would lower tariff and other barriers to trade in goods and services as well as in agricultural output.

The talks, dubbed the Doha Round because they kicked off in the Qatari capital in November 2001, were originally due to wrap up by the end of 2004, but they have gone from crisis to crisis, largely over agriculture and duties on industrial goods.

A bid earlier this year to get agreement on general outlines on the two central dossiers between four key trade powers -- the European Union, the United States, Brazil and India -- foundered at the start of the summer.

But at the weekend a senior Brazilian official said his country was ready for compromises in the renewed talks, although he insisted that the richer WTO members must make concessions in return if there was to be any chance of a breakthrough.

APEC CALL And leaders of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum were expected to call for an outline WTO deal to be completed by the end of the year when they meet in Australia next weekend.

A draft statement they are due to issue said APEC powers -- which include Japan, Russia and China as well as the United States and other Pacific Rim countries -- pledge to ensure the Doha Round is in its final phase by the year-end.

Falconer accepted today that if there were no progress in the farm talks -- which between tomorrow and the end of next week will break up into bilateral and informal meetings -- by mid-October, there would be a problem.

''If there is no agreement in six weeks, that is not something we can brush under the carpet,'' he told reporters at the WTO.

The Brazilian official, who was speaking in Brasilia last Friday, confirmed the question of farm subsidies -- which sets the 27-nation EU against the United States and both against richer developing nations -- was vital to overall progress.

''The progress we can make in September will depend on the advances we make in agriculture,'' said the official, Foreign Ministry Under-Secretary Roberto Azevedo.

But a gloomier note was struck on the eve of the new talks by France, where farmers have strong political clout and whose approval has to be achieved before the EU as a whole can accept any accord.

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde told a meeting near Paris last Thursday that the gap between developed and developing countries in the negotiations meant an agreement in the near future was unlikely.

REUTERS PY VC2332

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