NEW DELHI: Blaming political leaders from both developing as well as developed countries for the collapse of the global trade talks in Geneval last month, WTO director general Pascal Lamy hopeed that negotiations could be concluded within time frame, by 2008-end.

But, for this, he said, both Indian and US must bridge differences at political level. Lamy, who was here to meet Indian leaders to move forward in the negotiation, met PM Manmohan Singh and commerce minister Kamal Nath on Tuesday.

However, Nath said India is committed to the round but the industrialised nations have to come to the negotiations not with a mindset of "what you can get, but what you can give". If the principles of discussions have to change, keeping in view the interest of the rich nations, "it would be a tough going," he added.

Nath said Doha Round is not about increasing the prosperity of the developed world but reducing the poverty of the developing countries. He added that because of the subsidies given by the rich nations to its farmers, which keep prices of agricultural products at low level, there have been no investments in agriculture sector in the developing countries.

Lamy also agreed that the present food crisis is a result of the lack of investment in the developing countries. "One of the reasons for decline in production is the trade distorting subsidies and high tariffs in the rich countries," he said. But, answer to this has to be found out in negotiating table.

Lamy said that if WTO cannot reach a deal, the US agricultural trade distorting subsidies could see a sharp jump to over $ 48 billion a year from a ceiling of $ 14.5 billion, which the Bush administration had offered at the Geneva mini-Ministerial Meeting. Lamy argued that developing countries would get the lion's share of gains from scheduled commitments made in Geneval Last month.

The talks collapsed after a number of countries, led by US and India, failed to agree over operationalisation of "special safeguard mechanism", that would have enabled the developing countries to raise tariffs to protect poor farmers to counter surge in imports.

Lamy said the members should "try to understand each other a bit more because this poltical discussion has to translate into a technical discussion