* Doha Round talks intensify but 2010 completion goal hazy
* U.S. seen uncommitted, China, India, Brazil defensive
* WTO chief says Geneva negotiations pace "too slow"
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Countries in the forefront of talks on a global free trade accord must change their stance if the 2010 target for reaching a deal is to be met, officials said on Wednesday.
Senior negotiators who travelled from their capitals to Geneva this week said that leading countries returned to the table with "more of the same" arguments, despite the stated support from G20 ministers for an accord.
"Nobody is ready to show their cards," one official said.
The United States has not yet fully engaged in the talks and emerging powers China, India and Brazil were concentrating more on bilateral and regional pacts, he said.
Another envoy said "nothing is going on" in spite of the ramped-up meeting schedule at the World Trade Organisation, where he said negotiators are concentrating on "busy-work" without advancing tricky issues surrounding farm subsidy and import duty cuts.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said on Wednesday that "good political signals" from this month's New Delhi ministerial conference, as well as from G20 officials throughout the year, had not yet done the trick to spur on the Doha Round talks.
"The technical reality is that it is certainly doable. The political reality is that they want to do it. But the other reality is that the negotiating process in Geneva is too slow," he told the U.N. correspondents' association in Geneva.
"It is now a question of isolating a few issues that have political prominence and then cracking this, and then the rest will fall into place," he said.
The chairmen of the Doha Round's negotiations on agriculture and industrial goods -- the two biggest and most complicated areas of the deal also spanning services and trade rules -- have laid out a full work plan for 2009.
But some leading economies, including Brazil, are protesting the need to include proposals that would push some industrial tariffs lower, according to participants in the talks. (For a factbox on sectoral deals, click on: [ID:nL5661444]
The Doha Round negotiations began in Qatar in 2001 and were initially meant to be concluded four years later.
Resistance from major economies including the United States, European Union, China, India and Brazil to exposing their most sensitive markets -- or politically weighty farmers -- to more competition has caused the talks to sputter and stall.
Full consensus among the WTO's 153 members and across all areas is required for a deal to be concluded.
Supachai Panitchpakdi, a former WTO director-general who now heads the U.N. trade and development agency UNCTAD, said on Wednesday that poorer countries could gain a lot from boosting commercial ties with their neighbours as well as the world.
"Countries should not walk away from trade, but some rethinking seems to be necessary," the Thai national said in a statement. (Additional reporting by Robert Evans in Geneva)