WTO hopeful on Mexico round despite Doha glitches

A successful round of ministerial talks to deepen free world trade is possible in Mexico later this year despite missed deadlines in competing objectives set in 2001 at Doha, the director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said Wednesday.

"We need to make amends and compensate for the missing of deadlines last year," Supachai Panitchpadi told an international business conference in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. "I must continue to be optimistic. I see winds of optimism."

Ministers from the 145-nation Geneva-based organisation are due to meet at Cancun in Mexico in September this year against the backdrop of an unfinished agenda set in an agreement reached at Doha in Qatar in 2001.

Differences have cropped up on several issues, among which are the provision of medicines for the poor across the world and issue of agricultural tariffs.

In the case of drugs for life-threatening diseases, developing countries have come up with a wide range of diseases, medicines for which should be exempt from patent laws through compulsory licensing provisions.

Such licensing can enable the sale of copycat generic medicines, which threaten sales by firms in advanced countries like the United States.