IANS

New Delhi, Sep 2: Trade ministers of nearly 40 countries will meet over two days here from Thursday to try and draw a roadmap that can put the derailed Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations back on track.

India's Commerce Minister Anand Sharma will host the meet, which will include US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, Brazilian Foreign Trade Minister Celso Amorim and the director general of the 153-member World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy.

"This is not going to be a negotiating forum. We are looking for a commitment to re-engage on Doha," Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar told reporters ahead of the meeting - the first among a large group of WTO members since the one in Geneva July last year.

"The meeting will concentrate on working on a timetable for the talks."

The outcome of the meeting will also provide key inputs for the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh later this month that is being hosted by US President Barack Obama and to which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is among the invitees.

In fact, Manmohan Singh had offered to host the mini-ministerial meeting here during the London G20 Summit to give a renewed push to the stalled Doha Development Round of trade talks that had kicked off in the Qatari capital in 2001.

The talks have failed to proceed further because of differences between the rich and developing countries, mainly over agriculture subsidies, export sops and market access.

In Geneva last year, the talks particularly collapsed because of the differences over the special safeguard mechanism - a provision that would permit developing countries to guard against sudden surges in imports, or when commodity prices decline.

Developing countries, the African members and small and vulnerable economies, which together have a membership of more than 100 countries, are concerned about the livelihood security of farmers and opposed the stand of rich nations.

According to Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean, who is here for the meeting, told reporters on the margins of a conference Wednesday that while there was a lot of common ground among the member countries, several issues also remained unresolved.

"But this is not a negotiating session. There are issues and complexities of the issues and I think we should try and identify the areas that we need to address," Crean said at the event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).