NEW DELHI, March 13: India’s prime minister called on developed countries on Tuesday to make bigger farm subsidy cuts to ensure the success of the Doha round of world trade talks.

New Delhi was committed to an “early positive conclusion” of the deadlocked talks and believed a multilateral trading system was in the nation’s “strategic interests,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in the Indian capital.

But “to break the impasse, developed countries must make meaningful offers to reduce the huge trade-distorting subsidies provided to their agriculture,” Singh told a conference organised by the Economist magazine.

The Doha round of the World Trade Organisation talks, launched in 2001 in the Qatari capital, ground to a halt last July, but trade ministers at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year agreed negotiations should resume.

The European Union and US have been unable to agree on the size of cuts in agriculture subsidies and tariffs protecting their farm sectors and are pushing developing states to open their markets to industrial goods and services.

India, along with Brazil, have emerged as leaders in the developing world’s challenge to the wealthy nations to curtail generous farm subsidies as they seeks to keep their own agriculture supports.

A breakthrough in the talks must come before the expiration of US President George W. Bush’s Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) on July 1, WTO officials say.

If the breakthrough can be achieved, a conclusion to the Doha talks -- which have been called a once-in-a-generation chance to help bring millions out of poverty -- could be reached in about eight months, they say.

Singh said it “must be recognised that for us, agriculture is not just a business but a way of life and a major source of livelihood.”

”Markets are good for those who are part of a market system, but have no meaning for those who do not have the skills or resources to participate in it,” he said.

India says it needs to protect the livelihoods of its 650 million farmers, many of whom are desperately poor.

All countries should work towards an outcome of the WTO talks that “does not destabilise or cause distress to this large section of people,” Singh said.

India’s own efforts to build free trade agreements with many countries “should be viewed as building blocks of a larger agenda of trade liberalisation,” he said.

“Regional and free trade agreements help us speed up trade liberalisation and move closer to meeting our multilateral commitments,” he said.

As India’s economy has opened up to the world, the country appeared to be on a growth path which “if sustained for a decade or so, will enable us to eradicate the ancient scourges of mass

poverty,” he added.

For the first time in the country's history, the economy recorded over eight per cent growth in gross domestic product for three straight years, he said.—AFP