HOPES for a rescue of the Doha round of trade talks are pinned on Pascal Lamy, the World Trade Organisation director-general, and a faint chance that he might succeed in orchestrating a mini-trade summit in the sidelines of the G8 summit in St Petersburg on July 15.

The failure by trade negotiators in Geneva last week to reach a compromise leaves M Lamy with a last-ditch option of pushing the matter into the laps of the leaders in St Petersburg. However, M Lamy, who yesterday flew to Japan for talks, will need to secure the attendance in St Petersburg of a leader from a major developing nation, such as India or Brazil, to make a mini-trade summit feasible. Of the six key Doha negotiating parties — the US, the EU, Japan, Australia, Brazil and India — only the first three will be at the G8 talks.

M Lamy needs to persuade the EU and US to give ground on farm subsidies and tariffs and at the same time extract concessions from emerging market nations on industrial tariffs before the end of the month. The deadline is imposed by the expiry in July 2007 of President Bush’s mandate to negotiate trade agreements. It will take a year from an initial broad-brush agreement to prepare a treaty for ratification by the US Congress.

Signs that the Doha talks are already leaving the rails were evident late last week in Geneva, when Kamal Nath, India’s trade negotiator, walked out in disgust at the lack of new proposals from rich nations to cut US farm subsidies and allow more access to EU agricultural markets.

No compromise was offered at Geneva. Despite being handcuffed by French insistence that there can be no further changes to the Common Agricultural Policy, Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, hinted that a compromise might be possible, conditional on other parties moving at the same time.

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