World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Supachai Panitchpakdi warned yesterday that the troubled Doha Round negotiations on a new global trade treaty were in danger of running into the sand.
Trade sources quoted him as telling envoys to the 148-nation body that he could see widely opposing positions "hardening" in the vital talks on cutting goods tariffs just after the parallel farm talks seemed to have turned sour.
"I would say the mood is rather pessimistic," said one source closely following the negotiations, which are due to produce the framework for an overall accord in time for a WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.
The sources were speaking after a week of goods tariff talks were halted a day early amid acrimony, with different groups of countries - cutting across the usual rich and poor divide - accusing each other of seeking unfair advantage.
The deadline for a new pact, which diplomats say has to be met if it is to pass the US Congress without being picked apart after President George W. Bush's authority to negotiate trade deals runs out in early 2007, is December next year.
Mr Supachai's full remarks to yesterday's session of the Round's Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), its steering body, were not immediately released.
But in a written reply to questions on the state of the talks from the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, released in Beijing late on Thursday, he left no doubt he feared Hong Kong could fail if the current blockages were not quickly overcome.
When trade ministers from some 30 WTO countries meet in the Chinese town of Dalian on Tuesday and Wednesday, he said, he would deliver a direct message: "The Doha Round is in trouble."
Significant progress had to be made by the end of this month on the linked, and key, issues of how to cut tariffs on farm produce and on industrial goods, Mr Supachai told Xinhua.
"But we seem to be going in circles. I have been warning member governments for some time that they need to proceed with a great sense of urgency and commitment," he added.
"I'm not seeing sufficient political commitment at the moment and this worries me," said Mr Supachai, who hands the WTO helm to former European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy at the end of August.
The chairman of the WTO farm talks, New Zealand diplomat Tim Groser, told envoys when he halted the latest session of farm tariff talks two days early on Wednesday that he also was looking to Dalian to provide a needed boost.
But he indicated that he felt there was unlikely to be any real breakthrough there, according to diplomats present.
Trade analysts in Geneva said they doubted there would be much impact on the negotiations from yesterday's statement from Group of Eight (G8) leaders of major industrial powers pledging to end farm export support "by a credible date".
The analysts said it appeared to reflect no more than what the four major trading powers - the EU, the United States, Japan and Canada - had already promised in the Round, launched in the Qatari capital in November 2001.
Developing countries and, particularly, African WTO nations have been calling for firm and early dates for an end to EU and US farm support which they say distorts global markets and is a major cause of their peoples' poverty.