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Geneva: The mediator of farm talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said on Friday he would produce a revised negotiating text, opening the way for a meeting of ministers to clinch an outline deal in global trade talks.
New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer told reporters he would produce the new text by the end of this week or early next week.
Falconer's revision, coupled with a parallel text on industrial goods, would trigger a process culminating in ministers taking the big political decisions in a deal in the long-running Doha round to open up world trade.
"The time is imminent to do a revision on the existing revision," Falconer said, speaking after a session of WTO agriculture negotiations.
The talks have taken on added urgency with the desire of WTO members to show they are tackling the food price crisis, even though a Doha deal could have only a long-term effect on supplies.
But that pressure has stiffened the resolve of developing countries to ensure that a deal removes distortions from world farm trade that they say benefit rich countries and discourages poor nations from growing more food.
Negotiators declined to speculate on when a ministerial meeting would take place, saying simply they would proceed with the Doha negotiations "step by step".
But several developing country delegates said it was hard to envisage a ministerial meeting, originally proposed for around Easter, in the next few weeks, given the time needed for members to digest and review Falconer's new text.
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