The substance of an agreement between WTO members that would relaunch the so-called Doha round of trade talks is taking shape after discussions in London, an EU source said Sunday.

"The contents of an agreement are getting clear. The aim of the meeting was not to reach an agreement but to give very clear instructions to negotiators," the source said in Brussels.

WTO negotiators from the European Union, Brazil, South Africa and the United States met over the weekend in London.

"The mood was pretty positive. We are taking steps forward and the meeting was a good warm-up for the mini-ministerial meeting to be held in Paris in May," the source added.

In addition to the trade representatives at the London meeting, 15 other negotiators will meet on May 14 on the sidelines of a ministerial conference of the Organsation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The London meeting, which began over dinner on Friday, was

hosted by US trade representative Robert Zoellick, and involved EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, Kenyan Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi, his South African counterpart Alec Erwin and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim.

According to EU officials, the goal was to define a package of proposals that would incite the G90 group of 90 developing nations to make the Doha round of global trade talks a success. The aim, they said, was to successfully conclude the Doha round by January 1,2005.

The trade negotiations have been on the back burner since the failure of a World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003.

The meeting in London comes after delegates from the 147-member global trade body met last week in Geneva to discuss a July deadline to agree on a framework for particularly contentious topics, notably the fate of agricultural subsidies.

The EU source said that representatives at the weekend meeting in London had a "detailed discus-

sion" on the four main subjects holding up progress: farm, products, market access for non-agriculture products, development issues and the so-called "Singapore" issues -trade facilitation, transparency in government procurement, cross-border investment and competition.

"It's about finding what the limits are for each country," the source said.

The EU is insisting that other countries match its efforts to cut or entirely eliminate subsidies to farmers.

On market access for non-agricultural goods, the EU and Washington are pushing other big countries to make an effort in favour of the G90 countries.

On the Singapore issues, a compromise is taking shape to include trade facilitation in the final agreement for the cycle of talks, although an accord on cross-border investment and competition has been ruled out. Nothing had yet been determined about transparency in government procurement.