World trading powers should use their meeting next week in India as the last chance this year to save deadlocked Doha trade talks, the European Union's Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Wednesday.

"These talks are timely and important. If we are to use the remaining window of opportunity open to us, we need to intensify and accelerate the process of negotiation," Mandelson said.

Mandelson will go to New Delhi, India, next week for a ministerial-level discussion in the ongoing Doha trade talks, together with his counterparts from India, Brazil and the United States, the other three key trading powers in the World Trade Organization.

"If we fail, Doha's prospects for this year will be lost," Mandelson added.

The Doha round talks, initially launched in 2001 with the aim to alleviating poverty through fairer trade practices, came to a deadlock in July 2006 due to sharp differences among major WTO members on agricultural trade and industrial market access.

The 150 WTO members agreed earlier this year to fully resume the trade talks in a race to find a compromise before the U.S. negotiator's fast track negotiating authority runs out at the end of June.

Ahead of the New Delhi meeting, there were some positive signals.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday that U.S. President George W. Bush told him during their earlier meeting that an agreement could be reached within the next 30 days.

The deputy U.S. trade representative Peter Allgeier also said last month that his government was willing to make tariff concessions in its agricultural sector, a key issue hampering the Doha talks, at the next round of negotiations.

Source: Xinhua