Farm safeguards obstacle in trade talks

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA (Reuters) - As efforts begin to salvage a deal from the wreckage of last month's trade talks, experts say the first task is to untangle the confusion around a farm safeguard that proved a stumbling block.

World Trade Organisation WTO.L Director-General Pascal Lamy said the talks seeking a breakthrough in the core agriculture and industrial goods areas of the Doha round, now in its seventh year, were close to agreement on 90 percent of the agenda.

For many WTO members it would be frustrating to throw that away because of a dispute about a technical but important measure to help poor farmers withstand a flood of imports.

"Almost everything was right for a conclusion when we had this impasse between the United States and India," Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday.

"If we don't get back to the talks and if we don't clinch a deal in the coming months it will take four or five years more and that would be a huge loss for everyone," he said in Beijing, where he has gone for the opening of the Olympic Games.

Senior U.S. trade official Warren Maruyama said on Wednesday that the differences between the United States and big emerging countries like India and China were too complex to be resolved quickly, and there was no point bringing ministers back together until such issues like the safeguard had been sorted out.

But trade diplomats point to several factors suggesting that negotiations on Doha could be picked up soon even if a final deal must wait until after the U.S. elections:

-- U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab emphasised after the talks collapsed that U.S. offers remained on the table.  Continued...