Trade ministers from developing countries were holding a meeting in Mauritius Monday, amid growing signs that the effort to revive global free trade talks by the end of this month were faltering.
US trade representative Robert Zoellick and EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, were due to take part in the meeting of G90 developing nations in the Indian Ocean island, along with WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakhdi.
The 147 WTO members have set themsleves an end July deadline to agree on the broad outline of the way ahead for trade liberalization talks.
However Supachai Panitchpakdi said on Monday he saw clear signs that WTO member countries were prepared to be flexible. But he also warned that the main participants in the talks might lose interest if they could not see results by the beginning of next year.
He told the French La Tribue newspaper that a meeting of the WTO general council to be held in Geneva July 27 and 28 was "a historic opportunity and it would be deplorable if this is missed".
He said: "I think that, after two years, it is imperative to obtain progress in the Doha cycle (of trade liberalisation talks).
"I have detected clear signs of political will and of flexibility among member countries."
He made his remarks after a weekend meeting in Paris of five of the world's trading powers. The session ended on Sunday without having made any breakthrough on the key issue of agriculture, a major obstacle in the negotiators at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The informal meeting brought together chief negotiators from Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India and the United States in an attempt to achieve a common position on farm subsidies and tariffs.
"The meeting was useful and possibilities of covergence between the different points of view were identified," Brazilian trade minister Celso Amorim told journalists afterwards.
Supachai told the Tribune: "For the first time the countries responsible for the main differences concerning trade distortion made a commitment to eliminate their subsidies for agricultural exports.
"The main participants in the cycle risk losing all motivation if they do not have a guarantee that it will end, as planned at the beginning of 2005."
Like most of the other obstacles in the overall trade round launched in Doha, Qatar in 2001, the farming issue pits rich countries against poor countries.
Developing nations and agricultural exporters in the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters want industrialised states -- mainly the EU and US -- to get rid of subsidies which they blame for pricing their produce out of world markets.
There is also pressure to improve market access by bringing down tariffs imposed on agricultural imports to protect domestic farmers.
But there were signs after the Paris meeting that the gap between rich and poor still had to be bridged.
Indian Trade Minister Nath Kamal underlined that talks on market access must take into account the basic needs of 600 million Indian subsistence farmers.
"Otherwise, it will not be possible," Kamal added, as the drive to overcome the deadlock that led to the collapse of a WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico in September 2003 shifted to Mauritius.Agence France Presse:
