Geneva, Dec 12 - Faltering talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) need a positive signal from U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to save them from failure, Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, said on Thursday.
Such a move would be justified because a successful Doha round deal at the WTO would offer one solution to the global financial crisis that originated in the United States, he told reporters after meeting WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy.
"I think an encouragement from the incoming administration would be a very positive signal and would be probably what we need in this very last stretch," Amorim said.
Calling on Obama to show leadership and not hide behind formalities as the outgoing administration of George W. Bush handles the Doha talks, Amorim said it was up to Washington to show the maximum flexibility to help resolve the crisis.
Leaders of the G20 rich and emerging nations called last month for an outline Doha deal by the end of this year to help counter the financial crisis by warding off protectionism.
Trade ministers came close in July to a deal in the Doha talks, launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001 to free up world trade.
But that meeting collapsed over differences between the United States and India and China over a proposed safeguard to help farmers in poor countries withstand surges in imports.
Despite progress in technical negotiations since then, the safeguard remains a stumbling block. So too do proposals to create duty-free zones in industries like chemicals, and the level of trade-distorting U.S. subsidies for cotton.
Lamy is holding intense consultations with ministers from the United States and other major trading powers to see if enough progress can be made on these three issues to call ministers to Geneva to seek a breakthrough.
Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean said in Washington he thought discussions were progressing, but it was up to Lamy to decide whether to call a meeting.
Crean's plan has been to head to Geneva for the potential ministerial after stopping in Washington to touch base with U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.
Both Crean and EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton also attended a closed-door meeting on Thursday at the Center for American Progress, a think tank with strong connections to the incoming Obama administration.
Ashton will meet with Schwab over dinner on Thursday and again on Friday as part of a regular U.S.-EU forum on trade and regulatory issues. An Ashton aide said she would not answer any questions on the Doha round or other topics.
Amorim said that as far as he could judge, Lamy had not yet made up his mind whether to call ministers to Geneva.
WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said Lamy would decide on Friday, after a further round of calls with the major players.
Amorim, one of the keenest proponents of a deal because of Brazil's huge food exports, said not to call a meeting would be just as much a failure as to hold one that then collapsed.
And he said even if the prospects for a meeting did not look good, the dynamics would be different when ministers were negotiating in the public spotlight.
"Sometimes we are here as if we were in a private game, trying to seek advantage for one or for the other, forgetting that what happens here is of fundamental importance for the world at large," he said.