Doha best hope for services trade reform:Lamy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World trade talks, although slow moving, offer the best hope of expanding global markets for finance, shipping and other big service sectors, the head of the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday.

"I understand that many of you would be frustrated by the slow pace of the Doha round and by the fact that the fate of services negotiations is linked to other areas under negotiation," WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said in a speech at the Global Services Summit.

"But it would be disingenuous to believe that services liberalization would be easier outside the Doha round," Lamy said, adding he thought it was possible to finish the nearly eight-year-old trade round in 2010 as the Group of 20 leaders have recently committed to do.

Services such as banking, shipping and telecoms account for upward of 75 percent of rich economies and a majority and growing share of many developing countries. But they still account for less than 20 percent of world trade.

The slow pace of the Doha round, and the intense focus on agriculture and manufacturing issues in those talks, recently has prompted U.S. service companies to look at other initiatives for expanding international trade.

Former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky on Tuesday outlined several options in a speech at the Coalition of Service Industries meeting, including the negotiation of a services-only free trade agreement between the United States, the European Union and Japan.

She also suggested "sectoral" agreements, such as one covering services offered on the Internet, where a critical mass of countries would agree first to liberalize trade and invite others to join later.

BIG TRADE-OFFS NEEDED, LAMY SAYS

Lamy argued it would be harder to persuade big emerging markets such as China and Brazil to further open their financial and environmental services markets outside of a broad negotiations where those countries could expect to make gains in other areas, such as agriculture and manufacturing.