Diplomats pushed to limit in marathon WTO talks

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Trade Organisation's marathon-running chief pushed diplomats to their physical limits in gruelling late-night negotiating sessions, according to participants in the closed-door talks that collapsed on Tuesday.

"People are visibly tired. This is the longest we have ever gone like this in a ministerial conference," said a trade official who took part in the discussions chaired by Pascal Lamy, speaking just before the negotiations broke down.

The mood at the WTO's Geneva headquarters swung from hopeful to jovial to frank to "extremely tense" over the course of the unprecedented nine-day talks, with senior officials and chief negotiators showing the most strain, the official said.

"You could see they are getting really frazzled. They have been working around the clock."

Lamy called ministers to Geneva to push for a basic deal in the Doha round of talks, which began in 2001 and were first meant to wrap up in January 2005, some nine months before he took over as WTO chief.

It was quickly evident that the 35 or so ministers in Geneva made up too big a group to negotiate efficiently, so the Frenchman broke the talks into a subset of seven ministers and also held even smaller sessions and one-on-one talks.

But compromise proposals palatable to the small group got a mixed reception from the WTO's wider membership and caused a split between India and its developing-country ally Brazil.

Stress levels rose further when emerging trade power China added its voice to insist on measures to protect farmers from surges of cheap imports.