EXCLUSIVE-Banana deal emerging - trade sources

* Oldest trade dispute could be settled this year

* EU to cut tariffs, compensate former colonies

* Legal questions still to be agreed

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA, Nov 2 (Reuters) - An end is in sight to the world's longest-running trade dispute, involving bananas, and a deal could be in place by the end of the year, senior European and Latin American trade negotiators said on Monday.

Settling the banana dispute would be a fillip for the World Trade Organisation, whose long-running Doha round to free up global commerce, like other trade negotiations, has at times been held hostage by the decades-old row.

"We are not yet there, but I perceive a willingness on all sides to come to an agreement," Costa Rica's WTO ambassador, Ronald Saborio Soto, who coordinates Latin American countries at the WTO in negotiations on tropical products, told Reuters

Cesar Montano Huerta, the top diplomat at the WTO mission of Ecuador, the world's biggest banana exporter, said officials were negotiating intensively and even hoped to clinch a deal in the next couple of weeks.