Trading nations are to hold a crunch meeting on Monday to decide how to advance struggling talks on liberalising global commerce as the chances of meeting a looming deadline appear increasing out of reach, the WTO announced Friday.
Key differences on reducing customs duties and other barriers to commerce remain unresolved just days before the April 30 target, and senior diplomats representing the 149 members of the World Trade Organisation are to gather Monday to review the impasse, the global body said.
The deadline of April 30 was part of a loose accord at a WTO conference last December in Hong Kong.
At the conference, governments tried to bring some momentum back to the struggling Doha Round of negotiations, which was launched in 2001 with the aim of tearing down barriers to commerce and using trade to boost the economies of poor nations.
They agreed by the end of this month to come up with what are known in WTO-speak as "modalities," or formulas and other guidelines for reducing trade barriers.
But cross-cutting disputes among WTO members, particularly arguments between rich and poor members about concessions in the farm trade, have prevented negotiators from agreeing on the mathematics.
WTO members have still not decided whether to bring together their trade ministers at the end of this month for a meeting which was originally planned to cap weeks of talks among diplomats.
A more limited group of around 30 WTO ambassadors was expected to meet on Friday evening to assess whether it would be worth holding such a high-level meeting.
According to sources close to the talks, the outgoing US Trade Representative Rob Portman is keen on a gathering in order to bid his counterparts farewell and signal Washington's continued commitment to the negotiations.
Portman was earlier this week nominated White House budget chief and is set to be replaced by his deputy, Susan Schwab, but the change at such a crucial stage in the Doha Round has raised eyebrows among other WTO members.
The April 30 target is part of a drive to complete the round by the end of the year, before the White House loses its "fast track" authority to negotiate trade deals in 2007.
In July 2007, US Congress is set to regain its power to pick apart any trade accord, rather than having to approve or reject it in one go, and that has the potential to complicate future talks.
Beyond the looming deadline, WTO members also face a July 31 target for so-called "schedules," which set out how governments would implement the formal trade treaty that would mark the end of the round.
The Doha Round was originally meant to be completed in 2004.
