WTO members aim to finish Doha talks next year

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WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy - himself a keen marathon runner who is taking part in an annual Geneva long-distance race on Saturday - told WTO ambassadors that it was possible to complete the negotiations by the end of 2008.

The delegation heads agreed with a roadmap for the talks laid out by Lamy, but there were differences between countries over the treatment of talks on services such as telecoms and banking, trade officials said.

The next major stage in the talks, launched six years ago in the Qatari capital, is for the chairmen of the key agriculture and industry talks to issue revisions of the negotiating texts they produced in July.

These revised texts, reflecting the intense negotiations that have taken place over the past three months, would form the basis for outline agreements in farming and industry, known as modalities in WTO-speak, setting out the principles for cutting tariffs and subsidies, and the exceptions to those rules.

REVISED TEXTS

Lamy said the revised texts could now appear in late January or early February, with the modalities agreed a month later after further talks.

"If we agree on the modalities early next year, I believe we could be able to conclude the Round before the end of 2008," he told the ambassadors according to a copy of his remarks.

The revised texts were previously planned to come out this month.

But New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, who chairs the farm talks, asked for more time for negotiators to work on technical issues such as consumption data of politically sensitive foods that will receive special tariff treatment.

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