* Countries examine how safeguard will work in practice
* Banana deal waiting on other tropical products
* Deal might come next week, or after Nov.30 - Dec.2 meet
By Jonathan Lynn
GENEVA, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Negotiations on agriculture in the World Trade Organisation's long-running Doha round are making progress in a number of sensitive areas, the chairman of the farm talks said on Friday.
WTO members are looking in detail at how a safeguard to protect farmers in poor countries from a surge in imports -- the issue over which talks in July 2008 seeking a breakthrough in Doha collapsed -- might work in practice, New Zealand's WTO ambassador David Walker told reporters.
And talks on reconciling the conflicting demands of different groups of developing country exporters of tropical products such as fruit and sugar are also going well, Walker, who chairs the farm talks, said after a meeting of WTO members.
These topics are among the most complicated that need to be solved for the WTO's 153 members to reach an outline deal, known in trade jargon as "modalities", in the 8-year-old Doha talks.
"On the modalities issues we had some good engagement," Walker said.
SAVING THE SAFEGUARD
WTO members are also making progress in preparing the documentation for the lengthy and complicated process of converting the formulas in modalities into specific cuts in tariffs and subsidies, Walker said.
The safeguard would allow poor countries to temporarily raise tariffs if their farmers were confronted with a sudden destabilising flood of imports.
But the questions of how far tariffs could rise, for how long and in what circumstances torpedoed the July 2008 attempt at a breakthrough, with India saying it would not sacrifice the livelihoods of its subsistence farmers for a deal.
India's WTO ambassador, Ujal Singh Bhatia, told Friday's meeting that it was productive for WTO members to examine specific scenarios of how the safeguard would work rather than exchanging statements of principle, according to a participant.
But he reminded members that such a special safeguard mechanism would have to be simple and straightforward for poor countries to be able to use it when necessary.
While India and the United States were the most public adversaries over the safeguard, the question also pitted different groups of developing countries against each other, just as with tropical products.
One set of proposals in the Doha talks, launched in November 2001 to open markets and help developing countries prosper through more trade, would see tariffs come down faster and more steeply for tropical products than in general, benefiting countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Another proposal would do the opposite -- phase in cuts on these goods more slowly and gently -- so that former European colonies in Africa and the Caribbean with preferential access to the European market can keep their advantage for longer.
Reconciling this means negotiating which products will get which treatment.
The most sensitive one is bananas, where Latin American producers are demanding the European Union cuts tariffs which discriminate against their fruit in favour of the African and Caribbean growers.
A deal on bananas -- the subject of the longest-running trade dispute -- is imminent, but is awaiting agreement on other tropical products such as rum and tobacco, Latin American diplomats said.
"If we had a deal on tropical products today, bananas would fall tomorrow," said one diplomat.
A tropical products deal including bananas could come next week. If not, the countries involved have decided to postpone further negotiations until after the WTO's three-day ministerial conference starting Nov. 30, the diplomats said. (Editing by Stephanie Nebehay)