A new trade pact that global financial institutions say would put vigour into the world economy is unlikely to be ready for at least another two years, trade sources and diplomats said Monday.

The original target date for the deal at the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO) was the end of this year.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that at the current pace of negotiations completion during 2007 looked a more likely outcome, even if a "road map" for the way ahead is wrapped up this month, as officials hope.

But that also is far from certain. Speaking in Berlin on Monday, WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi said that if what he has dubbed the "July package" is not agreed, "it would spell a minor disaster... it might be major."

The Round, he said, could stall, leading many countries to push the WTO to the back of their priority list.

"At the most optimistic estimate, I can't see anything getting finalised before late in 2006," said one source close to the negotiations. "Time is now just too short."

"If it happens before 2007, or perhaps even 2008, I would be

mightily surprised," said a diplomat involved in the talks, dubbed the Doha Round when they were launched at a WTO ministerial conference in the Qatari capital in November 2001.

Although WTO officials have avoided any public statement on the issue, diplomats have long accepted that the year-end wrap up formally January 1, 2005 is totally out of sight.

The last hope of meeting that target disappeared when what was supposed to be a mid-term ministerial meeting of the 147-nation body collapsed in Cancun last September amid strong differences between developed and developing countries.

Central to the disargeements has been the problem of agriculture, and the demands from nations of the developing South for better access to the markets of the rich North as well as an end to subsidies paid to Northern farmers.

Since Cancun, WTO focus has been on getting an outline agreement on how the agricultural issue can be tackled while keeping parallel discussions on liberalising trade in manufactured goods and on services moving along.

But the latest predictions of overall delay emerged from a report, to be presented to the WTO's

ruling General Council later this month on the state of the talks on services.

The Chairman of those negotiations, Chile's WTO ambassador Alejando Jara, notes that of 117 member countries who should have presented initial offers on opening up their services markets by March 2004, so far only 65 have done so.

"In my view, this is cause for serious concern," said Jara in the report, a copy of which was made available on Monday.

Trade sources said his concern was based on the fact that even when the first offers are finally submitted the to-and-fro of the services negotiating process would take at least another two years before the end could come in sight.

Diplomats said it was excludes that services which include big ticket items like banking and insurance and others like call centres and tourism which are of vital interest to poorer countries could be decoupled from the overall talks.

The European Union and the United States, they said, as well as Japan, South Korea and Switzerland would only be ready to make major changes in farm subsidies if they could be sure of what to them would be a good deal in services.