World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Mike Moore has set an ambitious July deadline for an agreement on a basic agenda for a new round of global trade talks.

The WTO’s 140 members agreed this week to hold a meeting of trade ministers in Qatar in November, but Moore said today he wanted issues to be ironed out even earlier to avoid the wide differences which derailed talks in Seattle in late 1999.

“We think - we're entering a new stage of very intensive consultations now - that by the end of July we should see the shape of what will happen at the ministerial," Moore told Reuters in an interview.

When I’m talking to ministers, I'm saying. ‘Look, it’s the end of July, because 1 think we cannot walk into another ministerial with so many differences again.”

Thi^ Seattle negotiations fell

apart with the United States and European Union battling over farm subsidies and developing countries fighting calls by the US and EU to put minimum labour standards on the trade agenda.

"I think one of our mistakes in Seattle was we tried to conclude a negotiation, not launch one. We got into far too much detail," Moore said.

Moore said he was encouraged by the officials in the new administration of US President George W. Bush, who will be key to launching a new global trade round.

Robert Zoellick, nominated to be the next US trade representative, said at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday that achieving a free trade zone of the Americas was a top priority, but Washington also wanted to launch a new round of global negotiations, em-pahsising farm trade.

“I found (his comments) more than reassuring, very comforting." Moore said. "I believe they will

push."

Moore said, however, it was incumbent on Geneva to make progress on launching a global round or else the US and others would focus more on regional agreements.

“You can do the Americas plus you can do a new round. They’re not in contradiction. It’s a level of intensity, and we must gel things moving in Geneva. And we intend to", he said.

Moore will be meeting Zoellick later this month.

Agriculture, foreign investment levels, and anti-dumping measures remain the biggest stumbling blocks to launching a new round, Moore said.

Another challenge was how to draw in developing countries which are already struggling maintain existing agreements.

"People genuinely say to you, 'we can't do what we've agreed to do because we have a civil war. Our country’s falling apart. We

have enormous problems. Please don’t ask us to do more things," Moore said. \

He was due to meet severM non-governmental organisations and the head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sharan Burrow, in Melbourne, before meeting Australia’s trade minister Mark Vaile and other ministers in Canberra next week.

Trade unions and other NGOs were the source of massive antiglobalisation protests which began in Seattle and have been repeated worldwide in the past year, and Moore is making an effort to meet with their representatives on his travels.

But ultimately, he said, if they wanted to have an impact on global trade talks those groups would have to work on governments in their own countries.

"You don't change our position by talking to me. You change our position by changing our owners' position," he said.