Ministers urged to speed WTO talks in Montreal

Ministers must be ready to compromise in Canada next week on troubled world trade talks in virtually a last chance for a breakthrough before a World Trade Organisation summit in September, officials said yesterday.

The ministers from some 25 nations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meet in Montreal on Monday as the WTO's full membership prepares for the Mexico summit, widely seen as "make or break" for the Doha Round of global free trade negotiations.

The Doha Round, which aims to lower barriers to trade across the board from farm goods to industrial products and services, has missed a series of deadlines since being launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001.

"I expect signals of possible movement and possible trade-offs (in Montreal)," said Uruguay's ambassador Carlos Perez del Castillo, president of the WTO's executive General Council.