BEIJING. Nov 10: US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky opened talks with China's foreign trade minister on Beijing’s bld to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) here Wednesday in a last-ditch attempt to get a deal before the end of the year, reports AFP.

Barshefsky and Minister for Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOPTEC) Shi Guangsheng kicked off with a volley of mutual compliments before continuing their negotiations behind closed doors.

"Our hope is that by working with you we can make additional progress on China's WTO accession. It is with great pleasure that we are here today." Barshefsky said before the talks began in earnest.

"We appreciate every much the strength and breadth of your team many of whom are well known to us." she told

Guangsheng.

Shi expressed his appreciation of the US negotiators who represent the White House, the State Department. the Commerce Department and the •National Security Council.

"We have already met with each other a couple of times in the past." Shi said, ’This time you have a really strong teum and we have a really strong team too."

China's negotiating them includes the ministers of foreign trade, agriculture, finance, and foreign affairs, as well as the State Economic and Trade Commission, the People's Bank of China, Insurance and sec urities exchange commissions.

The talks are the first since Barshefsky and Shi met in Auckland on the sidelines of the Aslan Pacific Economic Cooperation informal summit In September.

US President Bill Clinton

phoned his counterpart Jiang Zemin on Saturday and proposed the talks as a last ditch effort to bring China into the trading body before a WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle this month.

Shi said recently a WTO deal had foundered after US officials published details of Chinese concessions during a visit by ■Premier Zhu Ronji to Washington in April.

China was furious the details of negotiations were made public before a deal was done. The US had rejected the offer as Insufficient — a move many analysts say was a strategic error.

Shi said US officials would need to correct the "misunderstanding" over the April talks before progress could be made.

Washington has pressed for broad market-opening commitments from Beijing and specific protocols on "bilateral trade while China has insisted they

have met the conditions necessary to join as a developing country.

To Join the Geneva-based WTO China must negotiate trade liberalisation accords with all its major trading partners, which it is currently attempting to do with the United States, the European Union and Canada.

US-China contacts have been plagued this year by US allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage and by the May 7 attack by US aircraft on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during NATO's Kosovo campaign. .

But contacts, suspended after the embassy attack, resumed following a meeting in New Zealand in early September between Clinton and Jiang. The t\yo leaders have since discussed WTO accession by telephone.