ISLAMABAD, July 4: Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan said on Tuesday the WTO member countries were likely to meet again by the end of the current month in a bid to thrash out a pact on farm and manufacturing trade-core areas of the Doha development round.

"Without a deal in these key areas, the future of the Doha round is at risk. If we do not turn things around radically in the up-coming meeting, WTO will run out of time to conclude the round by the end of the current year," he said and added: "This will be the make or break of the Doha round."

Talking to Dawn the commerce minister, who represented Pakistan in the mini-ministerial meeting held in Geneva recently, said that the ministers had failed to narrow their differences on the `modalities' that are needed to compile detailed cuts in tariffs and agricultural subsidies.

Mr Khan said that the members had given mandate to the WTO Director General Pascal Lamy to try to broker a compromise as soon as possible following the failure of the members to reach an agreement on modalities.

He said in the concluding meeting, it was also agreed that Mr Lamy should consult members intensively and widely in order to establish modalities as early as possible to facilitate and act as a catalyst.

The modalities were needed so that countries could list their new commitments to reduce tariffs on thousands of products and to cut farm subsidies. The lists will be in documents known as ‘schedules’ that will run to several hundred pages per country and to tens of thousands of pages for the whole membership. These lists will take several months for each member to compile and in each case for other members to examine and possibly negotiate.

On market access in farm products, Mr Khan said the European Union (EU) had offered to increase cuts in tariffs from 39 per cent to a reasonable level. But the G-20 and the United States were demanding higher cuts --to over 70 per cent. The settlement for tariff cuts on farm products could be in the range of 63 to 66 per cent.

He said that the members would also have to agree on certain percentage of cuts in over all trade distorting subsidies given to the farmers, particularly in the United States. The US has already offered 53 per cent cuts in trade distorting subsidies. However, the US linked any movement in cutting its domestic subsidies with clarity on the issue of sensitive products, special products and special safeguard mechanism (SSM}.

The EU wanted to protect their farm products to be decided by declaring them as sensitive--not to be subject to any cut in tariffs. While the G-33 developing countries have also proposed to allocate a certain percentage of their total tariff lines as special products (SPs) to shield them against any tariff cuts.

Mr Khan said that this was also a crucial area for deciding the percentage to be kept as sensitive or SPs in the next meeting. It is believed that the SPs percentage would be double of the sensitive products.

The minister said that indirectly the ABI group -- Argentina, Brazil and India -- had supported Pakistan’s formula of two co-efficient--one for developed and other for developing countries on non-agriculture market access (NAMA). The ABI proposed a co-efficient of 35 per cent instead of Pakistan's 30 per cent, which was the only difference.