Lamy hopeful of breakthrough on Doha round by June

New Delhi: WTO director general Pascal Lamy expects greater involvement from global leaders to deliver a breakthrough in the Doha round of negotiations at the WTO by June.

Lamy is currently in India to participate in a seminar on the Doha round.

He said, "The prospects of closing the gap (in positions of major players) appears more plausible and probable than ever. We are at a delicate and critical moment and have a possibility to deliver.

"There has been a pretty good movement and we have the opportunity of closing the gap some time end of June. The landing zone has started to appear," he said, adding that the push was coming from political leaders who realise that the cost of failure would be huge.

He said that the major countries and blocks — India, Brazil, US and EU — were involved in hectic bilateral negotiations and were close to making their offers "which could see us bringing down its trade distorting subsidies and EU its farm tariffs."

Emerging countries would be providing market access in right proportion.

Lamy was, however, worried that the movement was slow. He said talks have been at the bilateral level and any breakthrough would have to come at multilateral level.

Earlier speaking at the seminar, Lamy said: "we need to speed up the process so as to grasp the window of opportunity which closes by the end of June. In June US administration's mandate from the legislature to accept any deal at the WTO expires."