A mini-ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), to be held in Davos, Switzerland, this month will provide an opportunity for trade ministers to exchange views, but no agreement is expected on the Doha Round, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said in Geneva on Thursday.

"Mini-ministerials like this are not official WTO meetings so nothing can be agreed," Lamy told Xinhua in an interview.

"But they are an opportunity for ministers representing a wide variety of positions to exchange views on how we can move forward. Given the timing of this meeting it might be useful to review the timetable for 2006 which was agreed in Hong Kong," he added.

Trade ministers from some 30 WTO members are scheduled to resume talks in Davos, from Jan. 25, to take forward the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks based on the guidelines laid down in the Hong Kong ministerial meeting concluded last month.

The five-day mini-ministerial, taking place on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum summit, will be the first meeting of key ministers after the Hong Kong ministerial conference, which had limited success.

After missing an initial target to set a framework for a new trade liberalization treaty during the Hong Kong talks, ministers from the WTO members now aim to reach the "full negotiating modalities" of the Doha Round by the end of April.

"Obviously, a lot of hard work will be needed " to reach the modalities, primarily but not exclusively on market access, Lamy said in the interview.

"Governments will have to assess for themselves what they really want from this round and what they can realistically extend to the trading partners," said the WTO head.

"There will be a great deal of technical work needed, too, to examine the impact both on the import and the export side of tariff cuts that may emerge for various formulas," he said.

Source: Xinhua