Geneva, Sept 19 - Seven major trading powers are seeking a way out of the deadlock that scuppered ministerial talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in July, diplomats said on Thursday.
Senior officials from the seven -- Australia, Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States -- hope to come up with ideas on a workable "special safeguard mechanism", a proposal to help farmers in poor countries cope with a flood of imports.
Disagreement between the United States and India over the safeguard blocked July's ministerial talks, called to reach a breakthrough in the WTO's long-running Doha round to open up world trade.
"We are exploring some ideas. So far everybody has been constructive in the sense of trying to find solutions but there are still some things we need to clarify," Brazil's chief trade negotiator Roberto Azevedo told Reuters.
Azevedo, who said the officials were also looking at other agricultural issues unresolved in July's talks, expressed hope the talks could produce a result in the next 48 hours.
But the talks do not cover industrial goods, the Doha round's other main pillar, as the WTO needs to appoint a new mediator for industry after the departure of the previous one.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said on Tuesday he could invite ministers back to Geneva in the coming weeks to resume July's talks, depending on progress by the senior officials.
Lamy and many WTO members, rich and poor, believe the July talks came so close to a deal that they should be revived before the momentum fades and the political agenda changes.
MORE WORK NEEDED
But diplomats said the seven trade powers had to get a more concrete result before resumed ministerial talks were viable.
"A bit more work needs to be done before people would be confident about ministers coming back," said the WTO ambassador of one of the seven, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Diplomats said the mediator for the farm talks, New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, would hold consultations with broader groups of negotiators in the next two weeks in an effort to unblock the deadlocked talks.
That would include a meeting of about 25 WTO members on Sept. 25 to hear how they wanted to proceed.
Any proposed solution by the seven major countries would feed into those talks as part of efforts to build up agreement among all the WTO's 153 members.
"The idea is to try to get things done to see whether we have an outcome that could be given to Crawford as a contribution of the group," Azevedo said.
India, Indonesia and some other big developing countries say the safeguard must allow poor nations to act quickly to block imports that could hurt the livelihoods of subsistence farmers.
But the United States and developing-country food exporters such as Uruguay reject a safeguard mechanism that would block the normal growth of trade.