France's Trade Minister Christine Lagarde expressed skepticism on Wednesday that a broad deal could be reached in the Doha round world trade negotiations and suggested scaling back ambitions.

Speaking in an interview with the International Herald Tribune, Lagarde said the big trading powers no longer seemed to have the same incentive to reach a deal as in 2001, when the round was launched in the Qatari capital.

On Tuesday, the World Trade Organization announced that it would miss another self-imposed deadline for progress in the so-called Doha round.

World Trade Organisation members had intended to agree on measures to cut tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods by the end of April but have missed the deadline.

Negotiators should "think it through a bit harder and a bit longer rather than jumping in a direction that was planned in 2001," Lagarde said.

"Five years later the factors have changed massively on the European and on the global scene. It's a good reason to slow down, " she added.

Lagarde said negotiators had made so little progress in recent months there was almost no hope for a breakthrough and said chances were slim for a deal on all four crucial areas - agriculture, industrial goods, services and rules - before mid-2007, when U.S. President George W. Bush's "fast track" negotiating powers run out, making any agreement reached after that harder to get approval of Congress.

France, which is the chief beneficiary of the EU's generous farm subsidies, has played a crucial role in a trade round aimed at giving poor countries more access to Western agricultural markets.

Source: Xinhua