U.S., EU say WTO deal within reach, but still obstacles

By William Schomberg and Doug Palmer

BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new world trade deal is within reach if countries have the political will to achieve it, top U.S. and EU trade officials said on Monday.

"The Doha negotiations have made more progress than people realize," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Monday in remarks prepared for a speech in New York.

"While everybody has said that the talks are failing, they have in fact been moving forward and we nearly have a deal on the key issues," Mandelson said.

Negotiators launched the current round of world trade talks nearly six years ago in Doha, Qatar with the aim of tearing down barriers to international trade, boosting the global economy and helping poor countries export more.

But the talks have missed several deadlines as countries wrangled on sensitive issues such as farm trade and tariffs on industrial goods imports. They risk further years of delay without a breakthrough soon.

Many experts see the next month or two as critical for negotiators seeking to finetune draft texts on agriculture and industrial goods released in July. They believe time is of the essence because the U.S. presidential election next will likely stall a deal at least until after a new U.S. president takes office in early 2009.

Mandelson urged countries to look beyond the immediate impacts of a deal and consider the need to shore up the global trading system, especially after recent financial market turbulence has clouded the global economic outlook.

"We focus on a few tonnes of poultry imports here, or a couple of billion farm subsidies there or half a point off an automotive tariff somewhere else," he said.