Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Saturday that there could be some sort of breakthrough in the Doha Round of global trade talks in March or April.

"I left the meeting with higher sense of optimism," Amorim told reporters immediately after the informal meeting of trade ministers on the Doha Round negotiations.

Describing the talks as a positive one, the foreign minister said there was willingness to engage and restart the Doha Round negotiations in a formal way and there was a sense of urgency that had not been there before.

This year's informal meeting of trade ministers gathered some 30 trade or foreign ministers in Davos.

"I didn't see any voice that would depart from this general mood," he said.

He predicted that there would be lots of meetings, either bilateral or multilateral, in Geneva before March/April.

Both the European Union (EU) and the United States gave positive signs, putting more on the table than last July when the negotiations stalled, he said.

He said the developing countries were willing to be flexible on market access for industrial goods. But he said there was not yet a proposal on industrial goods and that the developing countries were formulating it in a precise way.

The Doha Round, launched in 2001, was suspended last July after six key WTO members -- the United States, the EU, Australia, Japan, Brazil and India -- failed to bridge their long-term differences on agricultural subsidies and market access.

The developing countries are pressing the EU and the United States to either open their agricultural markets or cut subsidies. The developed countries, on the other hand, want more market access from developing countries for their industrial goods and services.

Source: Xinhua