PARIS, July 25: World Trade Organisation director-general Pascal Lamy refused to talk on Tuesday of failure to reach a global deal, urging WTO countries to resume negotiations with new tactics.

He was speaking after talks on a global trade treaty were suspended on Monday after the 149 members of the organisation had failed to agree on cutting customs tariffs and reducing subsidies.

In an interview with French radio station France Inter, Mr Lamy said that WTO negotiators should “come back on the pitch having changed both tactics and position”.

Using another sporting analogy, he added that the situation was “a bit like basketball -- there is time-out during which the teams talk to their coaches and before coming back on the pitch”.

He refused to talk about a “failure” of WTO negotiations, known as the Doha round of talks.

“What I hope is that the seriousness of the situation is realised by the different players and that they come back on the pitch having changed both position and tactics,” he said.

“We are in a serious situation, people need to reflect. What would be a more serious situation is that they don't come back to the negotiating table.” Observers have warned that negotiations may not pick up again until at least 2009, largely because of the increasingly complex political calendar in the United States.

The WTO round, which started in the Qatari capital in 2001, marked an attempt to complete the unfinished business of previous decades' talks and make trade fairer, particularly in agricultural goods.—AFP