U.S. resisting early Doha round deadline: G20 sources

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - The Obama administration faced pressure from other governments on Thursday to agree to a rapid conclusion to the longrunning Doha round of world trade talks to help restore global economic growth.

The European Union, Brazil and Australia urged the United States in talks at the Group of 20 summit to set an early 2010 deadline for a breakthrough agreement on cutting agricultural and manufacturing tariffs and reducing domestic farm subsidies, European sources said.

But Obama administration officials, already facing a tough battle in Congress to win approval of healthcare reform, were anxious to avoid upsetting farm and manufacturing groups whose support would be needed to win congressional approval of any new world trade deal, the sources said.

Leaders of the G20, which groups major industrialized and developing countries, are meeting in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday for the third time nearly a year. The global economy has improved since their first meeting in November 2008, but is still fragile after suffering the worst downturn in decades.

The Doha round, which was launched in late 2001 with the goal of helping poor countries prosper through trade, has suffered many setbacks and is now the longest set of world trade talks since the modern rules-based trading system began.

After nearly eight years of negotiations, many countries are anxious to strike a deal on the basic "modalities" of agricultural and manufacturing trade reform.

"I believe we should move forward the progress already made in Geneva," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told Reuters in an interview. "We have decided ... a target of 2010 and we should stick to it."

But U.S. farm and business groups fear proposed texts would forced them into an agreement requiring the United States to cut farm subsidies and tariffs without getting big new export opportunities in exchange.

Countries should be prepared to make necessary changes to the existing texts, "but not to reopen the process as this would not be good for the global economy," Barroso said.

U.S. banks, insurance companies and other big service industries also worry setting an deadline for an agricultural and manufacturing modalities package could lead to the services sector being left out of any new world trade deal.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a top aide to India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said India favors an ambitious timetable for finishing the round.

"But you know progress along these timetables will depend on whether all the delegations show the necessary flexibility," Ahluwalia told Reuters in an interview.

"I'm pretty sure if the major countries give the lead, I think the developing countries value the preservation of the multilateral system and with the right amount of political initiative we should be able to do reasonably well," he said.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has said the United States needs to engage in direct bilateral talks with key WTO members so it will have a better idea of what it could expect to gain in exchange for cuts it is being asked to make.

Kirk has often noted "the substance of any progress will dictate the timing" of a deal, a U.S. trade official said.

At a G20 meeting in November 2008, leaders set a goal of reaching a modalities deal but the end of the year but that became the latest Doha round deadline to be missed.

(Reporting by Darren Ennis and Doug Palmer, Editing by Frances Kerry)