GENEVA: Negotiators at the WTO said a deal on providing poor countries with cheaper drugs to treat major diseases such as HIV/AIDS was taking shape, as top trading nations prepared to wind up a round of meetings on trade liberalisation talks on Friday.
The talks were still foundering on the central issue of agriculture and market access, and negotiators said they were looking for guidance from an informal meeting of ministers in Montreal, Canada due to begin on Monday.
European Union trade negotiator Carlo Trojan pointed out that the Montreal meeting would be the first gathering of trade and commerce ministers since the EU laid out key reforms to its farm subsidy system, and would also come as US pharmaceutical giants sought a swift deal on the medicines issue.
"The complication is that we don't only have governments, as is usual, but we have private industry at the table," he told journalists as a meeting of the World Trade Organisation's General Council got underway.
US and EU diplomats said they were trying to broker a deal which would preserve a tentative agreement on medicines reached last December at WTO.
But it would add a confidence-boosting pledge to stop generic versions of medicines from being sold on markets other than the poor countries they were intended for.
"Obviously part of that constellation has to be the December 16 declaration," US deputy trade representative Peter Allgeier said, adding that a deal should ensure that drugs producers in emerging markets did not reap a commercial adavantage from the arrangement.
Trojan said US pharmaceutical companies were looking for "belts and braces" and were no longer clinging to a restricted list of diseases that could be treated with cheaper medicines.
The 146 members of the Geneva-based global trade body are trying to ensure that developing nations without the capacity to manufacture drugs can import generic copies of patented medicines in a health crisis.
Negotiations became deadlocked in December when the US, under pressure from its pharmaceuticals industry, blocked an accord which had won backing from all the other WTO members.
The General Council meeting at WTO headquarters here was due to wind up on Friday after taking stock of the deadlocked talks on the Doha Development round, ahead of a key ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
But negotiators this week indicated no progress on the key obstacle, setting out the terms of talks on freeing the global trade in farm products in Cancun and aiming for an overall agreement by the December 31, 2004 deadline for the Doha round.
Allgeier reiterated that the US was willing to cut levels of domestic support for farmers by 100 billion dollars.
But he followed negotiators from other countries in highlighting the "crucial" issue of market access or tariff cuts, allowing farm products to be imported freely.
"For our farmers, if we are going to reduce significantly the domestic support they get, they need to have the outlets in international markets to sell their products," Allgeier said.
Negotiators appeared be struggling to "translate" the EU's internal agreement on reform of its much criticised farm subsidy system last month into progress at the WTO talks.
Trojan insisted that the 15-nation bloc also had "quite an ambitious" proposal for market access on the table at the WTO.
But he admitted that there would be "give and take" and that most countries were waiting to see who would make the first move. "What we need in Montreal is some guidance," Trojan added.
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