GENEVA, July 27: Negotiators working to agree on a new global deal to reduce trade barriers are moving closer to an overall accord, WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said here on Friday.

He was addressing a plenary session of the 150-member World Trade Organisation at the end of a week of stormy debate on measures to lower farm subsidies and to improve access for industrial goods to emerging market countries.

The talks are part of the Doha Round, which was launched in November 2001 in the Qatari capital and has foundered ever since.

“There continues to be a high level of commitment to concluding the round,” Lamy said, although “there are some significant differences which remain to be resolved.”

But he added: “Convergence is within our reach if you are all ready to show the necessary will and flexibility. The distance left to go to achieve all of this is not so great.”

Lamy said “intense” negotiations would resume in a month.

—AFP