World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy and US trade negotiator Susan Schwab held talks in Washington Friday in an effort to breathe life into the moribund Doha Round of negotiations.
Lamy's visit to the US capital comes on the heels of his trip to India last week as he tries to broker compromise after Geneva talks collapsed last month mainly over a US-India impasse on a special agricultural protection.
The Indian government told the WTO director general it would return to global trade talks if the US signals it believes the deadlock can be broken.
Schwab, the US trade representative, said she and Lamy had "covered a fair amount of substance and process" in talks over a private dinner late Thursday and for about two and a half hours this morning.
They were "talking about the way forward, talking about concerns we have about how we have seen and are seeing a deterioration in the package, in what was on the table in July," she said.