Montreal meet to talk common stance on farm subsidies

At the WTO's informal meeting starting here on Monday, 25 trade ministers will attempt to find common ground over the divisive issues of farm subsidies and medicine for poorer countries that have stalled the latest round of global trade talks.

The three-day meeting here is seen as crucial before the 146-member World Trade Organization's ministerial summit in Cancun, Mexico in September.

The latest round of free trade talks has made little progress since being launched in 2001 in Doha, Qatar.

So far, none of the deadlines for fixing negotiation modalities have been respected at only one and a half months away from the mid-way point for completion of the Doha Round, set at the end of 2004.

This informal meeting, or "mini-ministerial," in Montreal -- the third this year after gatherings in Tokyo and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt -- "is the last chance to save Cancun," said one French lobbyist and WTO expert.

And failure of the Doha Round could altogether jeopardize the credibility of the eight-year-old WTO, as bilateral trade pacts are turned to instead.

Senior Canadian officials played down the Montreal talks as a make-or-break time.

"What we're doing in Montreal is we're looking for countries to bring new signals of flexibility to the table that would allow negotiators to go back to Geneva and start working towards an agreement on modalities," one Canadian official said on background.

That way, he continued, "ministers (will) have a smaller number of questions to deal with in Cancun... the real objective in Cancun is to try to establish modalities as well as a timeline for the rest of the negotiations."

His remarks came as WTO director-general Supachai Panitchpakdi announced in Geneva Friday a sharp increase in the pace of ailing trade liberalisation talks with daily meetings for heads of delegations from WTO member states starting August 11.