'Rich world should restart WTO talks '

India urged developed nations Tuesday to return to the negotiating table to hammer out a new global trade deal -- but only if they are willing to give and not just look for what they can get.

The latest round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks, which saw emerging powers such as India, China and Brazil take centre-stage, fell apart in July in a potentially devastating blow to millions of the world's poor.

Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath said on Tuesday "we must seize the moment, we must not let it pass" to reach agreement in the talks, billed as the "development round."

But discussions should only resume if industrialised nations "come to the table not looking for what you can get but what you can give," said Nath, who championed the cause of the world's subsistence farmers at the Geneva talks.

"I can't negotiate attitude, I can't negotiate mindset," Nath told a business seminar.WTO chief Pascal Lamy, who later met Premier Manmohan Singh to sound out chances of reviving the talks, told the same audience WTO members had appealed to him not to "throw in the towel" as agreement had "never been so close."

"The good news is there may be still a possibility to move this forward and conclude negotiations within the (earlier agreed) timeframe, that is end-2008," said Lamy, who is on a two-day visit to India.

The WTO chief told reporters he would leave with a sense of "the political will" in New Delhi to resume talks and he would conduct the "same exercise" next week in Washington to gauge the political mood.

"I will play the role of a midwife if the negotiating parties want delivery of the baby," he said.

The Doha Round, launched in 2001 in the Qatari capital, has repeatedly missed deadlines set for its conclusion.

If the talks finally succeed, import tariffs worldwide could fall by half, or 150 billion dollars annually, out of which developing countries would get two-thirds of the benefits, Lamy said.

If no deal is reached, US farm-trade distorting subsidies could hit a massive 48 billion dollars a year from a 14.5-billion-dollar cap Washington had offered, he warned.

The latest negotiations were abandoned due to a row between India and the US over a so-called special safeguard mechanism allowing nations to impose a special tariff on agricultural goods if imports surge or prices fall.

India and other developing countries wanted the mechanism to kick in at a lower import surge level to protect their millions of poor farmers.

The US refused to accept Indian proposals that developing nations should be allowed to boost duties by an additional 25 percent on farm products if imports surged by 15 percent.

Washington insisted extra duties should be allowed only if imports rose by 40 percent.

"By the time imports reach that level, my farmers would have committed suicide," the Indian trade minister said.Lamy "has taken it (the talks) to the last mile -- it is for everybody to run this last mile," said Nath.

But "revival of the weakest" and "not survival of the fittest" must be at the heart of the talks, Nath said, adding it was in developed nations' interests to have "healthy" developing economies to give them new markets.

Analysts say it is unlikely India's government will soften its tariff stance much as 60 percent of its more than 1.1 billion people rely on farming for a living and their support is vital at election time.

General elections must be held in India by May 2009 and the embattled Congress-led government has already been wooing the rural vote energetically.

-AFP