Key WTO members to take stock of Doha round this week

New Delhi: Key WTO members including India, Brazil, EU and the US will make renewed efforts here this week to take forward the Doha Round of talks before the fast track authority of US President George Bush for signing trade deals expires in June.

At India's initiative, trade ministers from the group of four representing the interests of both developed and developing countries will on Thursday try to work out an acceptable framework toward the progress of the talks and find a meeting ground among competing interests.

Besides, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, the meeting will be attended by US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Brazilian Trade Minister Celso Amorim.

The G4 discussions will be widened to G6 with inclusion of Australia and Japan.

The last meeting of G4 and G6 was held in London after the impasse in the WTO negotiations was broken at the Davos on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum meeting.

Due to complexities of issues and conflict of interests 150 members have organised themselves into different pressure groups like G20, G33, G4 and G6.

India is a key member of all the major groupings.

Despite fresh efforts, wide differences continue to persist over the issues of farm subsidies and tariffs in developed countries and pressure on developing countries to open their markets for farm produce.

Even in industrial goods, developed counties want developing countries to cut their import duties and deadlock persists on formula to do this.