GENEVA, Nov 21: Countries negotiating a new global trade pact showed no willingness to budge from their fixed positions in past days, the chairman of agriculture talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said on Friday.

They have not changed their positions,” mediator Crawford Falconer told journalists after his consultations on farming issues that were meant to clear the way for a breakthrough in the WTO’s 7-year-old Doha round.

Last weekend, a G20 summit on the global financial crisis called for an outline Doha deal to be reached by the end of the year to ward off protectionism and boost business confidence.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has held off setting a date for trade ministers to come to Geneva to seek that agreement in order to assess advances shown among diplomats this week.

Lamy will meet key WTO ambassadors on Sunday to take stock of the talks. Falconer’s findings will be factored into that assessment.

If ministers come to Geneva, they will seek to reach an outline agreement on the core areas of the Doha talks -- cuts in agricultural subsidies and in farm and industry tariffs.

A meeting of ministers in July came close to a deal but ultimately collapsed over disagreements about a safeguard to help subsistence farmers withstand a surge in imports.

That remains unresolved, as do several other contentious issues, such as US subsidies for cotton and proposals to help mainly rich countries shield politically sensitive products from tariff cuts.

Before ministers can meet, Falconer and his counterpart for industrial goods, Swiss ambassador Luzius Wasescha, will need to reflect the latest compromises in the talks in revised negotiating texts that would serve as a blueprint for ministers.

Estimates of the benefits of the Doha round to open up world trade vary widely. One study last week by the International Food Policy Research Institute found that more than $1 trillion of trade was at risk if a deal did not go through. —Reuters