Poor countries will have to wait for the Doha Round of trade talks to conclude and are unlikely to get an advanced package directed to them before then, the head of the World Trade Organisation said on Saturday. Some Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have called for an “early harvest” of measures to benefit them as downpayment for a deal in the talks, already in their 8th year.

These would include proposals already widely accepted, such as giving poor countries duty-free, quota-free access for their exports to richer countries.

The Doha talks, launched in late 2001 to boost world trade by slashing farm subsidies and agricultural and industrial tariffs to help poor countries prosper, are already the longest-running trade round.

But rich economies such as the United States and European Union want the whole round of negotiations to end, so that measures benefiting poor countries are part of an overall package.

“For the moment there is no mandated ‘early harvest”, contrary to previous negotiations in the past,” WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy told Reuters in an interview.

“Least developed countries would wish this, other members for the moment have resisted this. So the situation as it is for the moment is benefits of the round for Least Developed Countries will occur at the conclusion of the round.”

Leaders of the G20 rich and emerging countries have called for a conclusion of the Doha round next year, and negotiators are working hard in Geneva to close the gaps. But Lamy told a meeting of LDC trade ministers on Friday that it would be hard to meet that deadline given the pace of talks. “My sense is that we still need to accelerate. We need to accelerate if we need this 2010 horizon to be met,” he said.

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