February 19, 2006	Sunday	Muharram 20, 1427

WASHINGTON, Feb 18: A long-awaited breakthrough in world trade talks could emerge soon because major players all know what has to be done, the head of the World Trade Organization said on Friday.

This makes me believe we could soon start to see the shape of a final deal, WTO director-general Pascal Lamy told a Washington audience of trade experts.

The Europeans know that they will have to move on agricultural market access. The US knows it will have to move on agricultural domestic support and emerging countries like Brazil, India, South Africa and a few others know that they will have to move on industrial tariffs and services, Lamy said.

And the good thing is that all of them have now said they will move in concert, he added.

Global trade talks made scant progress at a World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong in December. But countries set a new late April deadline for agreeing on a blueprint for farm trade reforms and reducing industrial tariffs. Trade ministers from the United States, EU, Brazil, India, Japan, and Australia also are meeting in London in March.

Countries face a hard deadline to finish the talks this year because US negotiating authority expires in mid-2007 and chances for Congress to renew it are extremely thin, if not naught, Lamy said after two days of meetings in Washington.

He also stressed that strong US leadership was needed to bring the round to a successful conclusion.

Although countries welcomed Washington’s offer last year to cut its trade-distorting domestic farm subsidies by 60 per cent over five years, many remain suspicious the US will avoid making real cuts by simply shifting some of its farm spending to different categories.—Reuters