Ministers from some 60 key members of the World Trade Organization will begin a series of intensive talks on Thursday with an aim to overcome major obstacles in the Doha Round of trade liberalization negotiations.

The major task of the ministers is to bridge deep differences in the fields of agriculture and non-agricultural market access ( NAMA), which involve cutting farm subsidies as well as agricultural and industrial tariffs.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy has emphasized again and again that reaching agreement on modalities of agriculture and NAMA is vital for moving the whole Doha Round of talks forward, as the two fields hold the key to other important issues such as services, rules, trade facilitation, etc.

According to a practical timetable set by the 149 WTO members, the whole Doha Round must be occluded with a wide-ranging free trade agreement by the end of the year. To do that, negotiators must reach modalities of agriculture and NAMA in time so that enough time could be left for solving other issues.

The end of June is a latest deadline set by WTO members to reach modalities, which is a WTO jargon meaning precise formulas for cutting subsidies and tariffs. An April 30 deadline has been missed due to sharp differences among WTO members.

Lamy stressed on Wednesday that WTO members cannot postpone a decision again. "If we were to do that it would put the entire project at risk," he told reporters after an informal session attended by all WTO members.

"I'm not raising the stakes. The clock is raising the stakes. The clock is ticking," said Lamy.

"Postponing decisions on cuts to subsidies and tariffs until later in the year is a recipe for failure," he said. "We need the ministers to crack the nut now, not later."

The negotiations in the next few days will take place in various forms, including informal full-member meetings as well as group talks, according to Lamy.

After a series of informal negotiations, a formal full-member meeting will be held on Saturday, and which could be continued on subsequent days as necessary.

As too many differences remain among WTO members, the discussions of ministers will firstly focus on certain key issues - such as the level of ambition and flexibilities in the two main areas.

All topics contained in agriculture and NAMA are equally important and have to be addressed, but there must be a sequencing, Lamy said.

The Doha Round, launched in 2001 and originally meant to end in 2004, aims to use trade to help poorer countries' economic development.

Key players, notably the European Union, the United States and major developing countries such as Brazil and India, have disagreed persistently on the concessions they would be required to make.

Source: Xinhua