The Bush administration returns to Doha round trade discussions next week with renewed optimism, hoping negotiations in the long-troubled talks can produce a detailed blueprint by late September, a senior US trade official said on Friday.
Negotiators will gather in Geneva to press ahead in the World Trade Organisation's Doha round, which has been mired for almost six years in deep divisions on farm subsidies, tariffs and a host of other issues.
Following a fall-out in June among the round's leading players, a US trade official said the negotiating climate had been improving, aided by a new negotiating proposal in July that laid out a framework for a possible deal.
"I'm fully expecting to go back to Geneva and find countries ... coming there with the intention of negotiation and not just reiterating the same sort of speeches," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"We certainly are ready ... and I think we'll see it," he said. He said the draft text, released by Crawford Falconer, who chairs the round's agriculture negotiations, had focused the talks and helped negotiators discern just what a new trade deal would look like for their countries.
But he pointed to several US priorities, like tropical products and goods developing countries can shelter from full tariff cuts, that the paper had skirted. He said more definition will be needed before the round can move ahead.
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