India hopes for key trade round meeting in April

LONDON (Reuters) - Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath said on Friday he hoped ministers could meet to try to thrash out agreement in long-running global trade talks in April, but positions were too far apart for them to meet now.

"I hope the WTO (World Trade Organisation) ministerial meeting is held in April, when the number of points of disagreement are lessened," Nath told Reuters after talks in London with European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.

"At the moment, just in agriculture, they have 130 (disagreements). You can't sit in a ministerial with 130. These must be brought down to 15 or so for ministers to sit down and take a decision."

"They are intensively negotiating and this is an important window of opportunity," he said.

The WTO is struggling to balance competing demands from rich countries, which are calling for greater access to developing world markets, and poor nations, which want lower U.S. farm subsidies and an end to European barriers.

The WTO has been hoping to call trade ministers to Geneva in late March or April for a meeting that might produce a breakthrough after more than six years of talks.

Nath said all countries' sensitivities must be respected in the trade talks and he fired a shot across the bows of the United States and European Union, implying that their demands could undermine poor countries' economies.

"Unless there is respect of sensitivities of all countries, we are not going to see convergence," he said, mentioning sensitivities on development and subsistence farming.

"There are some very ambitious demands of the EU and the U.S. The EU and the U.S. must understand that it is necessary in their own interest to have healthy economies in Asia and Africa. That is better than any kind of tariff reduction," he said.

"Only if there are healthy economies in Asia and Africa and the Caribbean and the Pacific will the EU and the U.S. stand to gain," he said, adding that he was afraid that a bad agreement could harm the Indian economy.