U.S. questions value of early Doha trade text

A truck passes shipping containers stacked at the Container Terminal at the Cochin Port on Willingdon Island in Kerala July 27, 2009.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Divided global trade negotiators risk moving further apart if a revised text on a global deal is pushed through by Easter as planned, the United States told World Trade Organisation (WTO) delegates on Tuesday.

The United States' disputes with China over tariffs, access and subsidies constitute some of the main sticking points holding up a deal in the decade-old Doha round of trade talks.

But the U.S., led by Ambassador Michael Punke, told delegates at a WTO meeting that "those consultations were not the full extent of the U.S. concerns," according to a delegate who was in the meeting but did not want to be named. The U.S. intervention also said that "a revised text might exacerbate problems," according to the delegate.

Punke later told reporters his fears were surrounding any text that was not "bottom up".

"Any text should come from the members and should not be imposed," he said after the meeting, adding his position was widely supported in the room.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy gave delegates in the same closed-door meeting one of his starkest warnings yet that time was running out for Doha.

"He pretty much said 'you need to decide what you are going to do. Are you going to do this thing or not,'" said another delegate who left the meeting early for another appointment.

Lamy was opening an informal session of the WTO's Trade Negotiations Committee, which has special responsibility for the Doha round and reports back to the WTO's General Council.

The ambitious negotiations are aimed at opening up world trade for the benefit of all nations, but they are stalled on a series of sticking points over tariffs, subsidies and market access.

Lamy has repeatedly said progress is too slow. The latest deadline negotiators have set themselves is a deal by the end of this year, since elections in some key countries including the United States could cause problems in 2012 and the talks are already years late in reaching a conclusion.

They hope to have a viable text ready to take to ministers by Easter, now less than a month away.

The first delegate said he doubted success this year, but that saving face for the WTO was important. "It will be about how failure is framed," he said.

A Geneva newspaper on Tuesday pronounced the talks "dead".

"The Doha round is dead, but Pascal Lamy doesn't want to recognise it," Le Temps quoted a senior trade diplomat as saying.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Matthew Jones)