"The moment is ripe to relaunch the negotiations", which nearly ground to a halt following the breakdown of a WTO ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico in September.

"The EU has clearly stated during the past months that it won't leave the multilateral trade negotiating table," said Lamy, speaking at talks outside the Mauritian capital with 16 eastern and southern African countries aimed at negotiating a region-to-region partnership accord.

The current round, launched in the Qatari capital Doha in November 2001, is due to conclude by January 2005, but progress toward eliminating barriers to world trade has been hampered by disputes over agricultural export subsidies in the industrialized world, which developing and emerging market countries want to see abolished.

Developing countries are also resisting pressures from Japan and the European Union to enlarge the scope of the WTO mandate to cover such issues as competition and investment policies.

"Before and during Cancun, I had the impression that our positions were not that radically different as some thought," said Lamy, pointing to the key issue of cotton subsidies.

"We have fully supported the initiative of Western African nations" to eliminate cotton subisidies, said Lamy, adding the European Union was on the point of clarifying its position on the issue.

At the opening of the Cancun meeting a coalition of South American, African and Asian countries demanded the EU and United States reduce agricultural subsidies, in particular on cotton.

Ninety of the less developed countries in the 148-member WTO formed an alliance to push their demands, effectively blocking the negotiations.

Lamy said he was "convinced that developing countries have the most to win from a positive outcome of the negotiations."

He said he was in favor of taking into account the special concerns of small economies in the trade talks.

The US has also pushed for restarting the Doha talks, with US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick writing last month to other WTO members to call for the resumption of trade talks with a new stripped-down agenda.