World Trade Organisation (WTO) states must get down to hard bargaining immediately if a 2006 target for a free trade pact is to be met, the organisation's chief said on Monday. "Participants must get down to real negotiations in all areas, meaning real give and take, and they must do this now," WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi told a meeting of the organisation's Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC). Negotiators appeared to agree that a detailed blueprint in the key areas of farm and industrial goods trade, with significant advances also in negotiations on services and in other issues, must emerge from next December's ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, he said. But for the Hong Kong meeting to succeed, the negotiations on lowering global barriers to commerce would have to make significant progress in Geneva by the time the WTO closed for its summer break at the end of July. "By July, we must be able to judge across the board whether we are on course for a significant outcome in Hong Kong," he said, which in turn meant some "first approximations" emerging from the various negotiating groups by early that month. --More 2256 Local Time 1956 GMT
