Geneva, April 30:

The four key players in the WTO’s long-running round of trade liberalisation talks — the European Union, the United States, India and Brazil — will meet in Paris on May 17-18, a European source said here on Monday.

Representatives from the “G4” group — EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath and Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim — will hold discussions in an embassy in the French capital, the source said.

The four last met in New Delhi in mid-April but failed to reach a deal on agriculture, which has stymied global trade talks since the Doha Development Round was launched in the Qatari capital in 2001.

Within the G4, the United States and the European Union have engaged in bitter arguments over trade in agricultural goods, with Brussels demanding more reductions in US farm subsidies and Washington insisting that proposed European tariff cuts do not go far enough.

At the New Delhi meeting, the ministers agreed only to aim for a compromise by mid-June. The Paris meeting will follow a larger ministerial gathering to discuss the World Trade Organisation impasse on the margins of the annual meeting of the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the French capital on May 14-15.

A further G4 meeting is planned in London on June 10, and subsequent talks are also scheduled some time between June 14-19, though the location has yet to be determined.

Japan and Australia are at the same time trying to organise a meeting of their two countries along with the G4 for May 23 in Tokyo, but so far little headway has been made, the European source said.