By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - A breakthrough this month in long-running world trade talks is unlikely, despite a recent high-profile push by President George W. Bush and other world leaders, analysts said on Wednesday.
"All the signs are pointing toward punting it into 2009," said Dan Griswold, director of trade policy studies at the Cato Institute. "We've waited seven years. We can wait another few months for the next major meeting of WTO members."
With countries still far apart on basic details of a deal, U.S. business lobbyists said they found it hard to believe World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy would risk calling trade ministers to Geneva next week for a ministerial meeting that could end in failure.
"With such an important player as the United States in transition from one president to another, any decisions really have to be ratified by the incoming administration," Griswold said.
The Doha round of world trade talks has lurched from one crisis to the next since being launched seven years ago in the capital city of Qatar.
Trade ministers came very close in July to a breakthrough on core farm and manufacturing trade issues that have long blocked a deal. But that effort fell apart when the United States disagreed sharply with India and China over provisions of a "safeguard" mechanism to protect developing country farmers from a surge in imports.
Last month, world leaders meeting in Washington called for a breakthrough on that issue and other core "modalities" by the end of the year to set the stage for a final deal that could help revive sagging world economic growth.
The Group of 20 countries included all major players in the WTO talks, including the United States, China, Brazil, India and the European Union. A different collection of world leaders echoed the G20 call a week later at the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima, Peru.
'A BALANCE OF BENEFITS'
Since then, Lamy has pushed key participants in the talks to bridge their differences, with the idea of calling a ministerial meeting if it looked like a deal could be reached.
However, leading U.S. lawmakers and major U.S. farm and manufacturing groups have strongly criticized new WTO drafts released on Saturday. They believe they do not provide enough new export opportunities in exchange for cuts in U.S. farm subsidies and agricultural and manufacturing tariffs.
Even if the Bush administration believes it can still cut a deal that is in the best interest of the United States, that task is complicated by the short time it has left in office.
"It's always the case at the end of a negotiation that you have to decide whether there's enough on the table to justify making a deal even if it's not perfect, and then trust your ability to sell it afterward," one analyst said.
"The trouble here is the team that's cutting the deal isn't going to be around to sell it afterward," he said.
Griswold agreed that was a problem, especially given the strong reservations leading members of Congress are expressing about the talks.
Still, some experts hope a modalities agreement can still be reached this month.
"There's been so much work done here. We all know the world economy needs any little pluses that can be found," said Sherman Katz, a trade specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
For other countries, this could be the best chance for a long while to strike a deal with Washington because of the time it will take President-elect Barack Obama's administration to get up to speed, Katz said.
But any agreement has to produce "a balance of benefits for us as well as others," he said.