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Global free trade talks stir after hibernation

REUTERS, Geneva
Global free trade talks are starting to stir after months of hibernation and envoys and analysts are quietly hopeful it will not prove a false spring.
Many observers had written off 2004 after a key meeting of trade ministers collapsed in September, arguing that with elections in the United States and elsewhere, no progress could be expected at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations for a year or more.
But the mood has changed, partly in response to a strong call by chief US trade negotiator Robert Zoellick not to "waste" the year and partly because of signs progress can be made on issues previously seen as intractable, like agriculture.
Combined with the more assertive stance of WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi, who had been accused by some trade representatives of being too diffident in the past, and the result is a new sense of determination, envoys say.
Few believe the original goal of completing the talks -- known as the Doha round -- by the end of the year is achievable, but, equally, few now rule out partial deals in 2004. The
first part of the year could be crucial.
"Significant things are occurring," said trade analyst John Weekes of Geneva law firm Sidley, Austin, Brown and Wood. "The circumstances are more conducive to producing a good result, or at least progress."
The round, launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001, seeks to lower commercial barriers around the world from farm trade to services. According to the World Bank, success could add more than $500 billion to world incomes by 2015 and lift 144 million people out of poverty.
But talks struggled from the start. And when ministers met in Mexico last autumn to try to inject new momentum, they simply deepened divisions, particularly over farm trade and whether to introduce new areas for negotiation, such as pacts on investment and competition policy.
A new alliance of developing countries, the G20, led by Brazil, India and China, made clear there would be no let up in the call for rich states -- the United States and the European Union -- to cut the massive subsidies they pay farmers and which poorer nations say exclude them from world markets.
Both rich and poor nations left the meeting in the Mexican resort of Cancun blaming each other for the breakdown.
But since then there have been signals from the EU, the world's most lavish user of farm handouts, that it could concede more in agriculture, particularly in the most sensitive area of export subsidies for goods such as sugar and dairy produce.
When Zoellick wrote last month to all 146 WTO members urging them to redouble efforts for a deal, he said it was clear farm export subsidies would have to go as the price of any progress.
The new mood could get its first real test on February 12-13 when senior officials from the G20 and the EU meet in Geneva, with agriculture topping the agenda.
The G20 has said it also wants to meet US negotiators, although Zoellick, who sets off on a two-week tour of trade capitals this weekend, has yet to react to the invitation.
Various Doha negotiating committees, which had been on hold since the middle of last year as the WTO sought to focus attention on just a few key areas in the run-up to Cancun, will also resume work this month.