World trade chief appeals for compromise

Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organisation, has appealed for movement from all sides over deadlocked talks on global commerce, insisting that reaching a deal is "not mission impossible at all".

His comments follow a decision last week from key players in the Doha trade talks, including the EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, that they are too far apart to hope to reach a detailed agreement at next month's crucial Hong Kong meeting.

M. Lamy told The Independent that, had the objectives for Hong Kong not been scaled down, the risk was of an acrimonious collapse similar to those at previous summits in Seattle and Cancun.

Following the rejection by emerging nations, including Brazil, of an EU offer on agricultural market access, M. Lamy said the "positions are too different" to be in a successful "negotiating zone" at Hong Kong.

He argued: "It was better to stage Hong Kong as a step forward rather than a big make-or-break brinkmanship aim, the risk of which was failure. Look what happened after Seattle or Cancun. After Seattle it took nearly two years to produce proposals, after Cancun it was nearly one year. I don't think we can afford this."

At Hong Kong ministers had hoped to clinch two-thirds of the ultimate deal by agreeing key figures. M. Lamy said: "If ministers think that jumping to the two-thirds level in one jump is not available, let's work out at this stage that we have one more step forward rather than one step backwards."