ISLAMABAD, March 3: Pakistan, like African nations, wants developed countries to liberalize their agriculture, give more market access and reduce subsidies significantly.

Speaking at the WTO Mini-Ministerial Conference held in Nairobi, Pakistan's Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan said Pakistan has gone through major reforms in the past few years and in the WTO negotiations could act as a bridge between the developed and the developing nations, as it has been successful in its efforts of reforms.

According to a message received on Thursday, Mr Khan said areas such as textile are also of significance for Pakistan. "We have suggested better access in these areas," he added.

Elaborating the need of the present Mini-Ministerial Conference, he said that last year in Geneva a framework of negotiations was agreed. It was a positive sign. Since then, a lot of technical negotiations have taken place.

"We did negotiate also on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. It became a Mini-Ministerial at Davos and it was resolved that there was a need to have a major achievement in the Hong Kong Ministerial Round," he added.

In this context, the Kenyan conference was taking place at an opportune time where they could focus on how to reach the modalities, and progress could be made in services, rules related and development issues.

Talking about the tangible results of Kenya mini-ministerial, the minister said: "We would like to discuss the US proposals put forth in Davos and let us see how much progress we can make on the tariff and non-tariff barriers but I am still optimistic that the year 2005 should be positive for Doha Round."

Mr Khan said that he was confident that progress would be made so that first approximation could be arrived by July 2005. He said agriculture has been and would continue to remain the main focus. Considerable progress has been made in agriculture and we would continue to achieve a balance in the other areas of negotiations.

According to another official announcement, Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan, at a sideline meeting of the WTO Mini-Ministerial Conference in Kenya, has said Pakistan is exploring the possibility of initiating talks on free trade agreement (FTA) with all the three East African countries - Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The commerce minister said "We are equally exploring the possibility of FTA with the three East African countries. I discussed this issue with the Kenyan Minister of Trade when he visited Pakistan last month."

Currently, one of the major issues was to resolve the trade problem with Kenya, which arose because of the increase of duty by Kenya on Pakistani rice. The minister said that Pakistan was the largest buyer of Kenyan tea. He expressed great concern on the imposition of heavy duty on Pakistani rice, which created a major anomaly in bilateral trade relations.

"Such measures do not encourage us. That does not help trade relations. I have tried to make Kenyan government realize that good trade relations do not work that way," he added.