(Adds quotes, background) By Jonathan Lynn GENEVA, Dec 1 (Reuters) - The top trade officials from Brazil and the European Union said on Monday they were hopeful about prospects for a breakthrough in the Doha world trade round, and said a ministerial meeting should take place soon. The EU and Brazil have been among the most vocal advocates for a push to wrap up the seven-year-old global free trade negotiations by the end of this year, as a way to inject confidence into the troubled world economy. "I am moderately optimistic that we can finalise this by the end of the year," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said at a news conference with EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, who said: "I would use the words cautiously optimistic." Amorim said that holding a World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting soon may be risky, but not holding one would be worse. "If we don't have a ministerial, it is a failure. And we won't be able to disguise that from the view of the world," he said. "There is no choice, really, here. Either we try or we don't try. And we have to try." A new WTO deal would cut subsidies and tariffs on thousands of exported goods and cross-border services, prying open food, clothing and other markets to boost global economic activity. But previous efforts to wrap up the accord -- which requires full consensus among the WTO's 153 members -- became stuck on many countries' resistance to exposing their farmers and key industrial sectors to more competition. A study last month by the International Food Policy Research Institute estimated that more than $1 trillion in world trade was at risk if the Doha round was not concluded soon. IMPORT SURGES Amorim said a deal would be difficult if WTO members try to make major changes to what was agreed in July at a ministerial meeting, which ultimately collapsed over differences about measures to safeguard subsistence farmers from import surges. And he said now was not the time for negotiators to push for incremental improvements for their countries either. "You can't measure a one percent gain here or there or a $10 gain here or there, you have to compare that with the big loss that there would be for the whole of mankind of a failure," he said. Both Ashton and Amorim said the financial crisis had changed the backdrop to the talks. "The world has changed and ... the completion of the round would be an important signal as well as an important part of getting beyond the economic difficulties we face," she said. One sign of those difficulties came earlier on Monday, when India announced that exports had fallen in October, the first year-on-year decline in nearly three years. [nDEL383043] India's tough defence of its hundreds of millions of peasants living in poverty contributed in July to the deadlock over the safeguard for farmers. But economists say India's modernising economy needs export markets, giving it a strong interest in a Doha deal. Ashton said that India was negotiating actively in Geneva, despite last week's attacks in Mumbai. She said her optimism about the talks was based on the progress that negotiators were making in some areas, and last month's strong political call from leaders of the G20 rich and emerging countries for a deal by the end of the year. Besides the farm safeguard, negotiators were discussing questions such as capping farm tariffs, and limiting the number of "sensitive" agricultural products that countries could shield from the full impact of tariff cuts, Amorim said. If it occurs, a December ministerial meeting would focus on trade in agriculture and industrial goods and leave talks on other issues including cross-border services for a later date. The chairmen of the agriculture and industry talks will update their negotiating texts that would serve as a blueprint for a deal at the end of this week, and Amorim said ministers could convene in Geneva a few days after the papers appear. (Reporting by Jonathan Lynn; Writing by Laura MacInnis; Editing by Giles Elgood)
A Kashmiri protester pushes a handcart to be used as a barricade to stop Indian policemen during an anti-poll protest in Srinagar November 21, 2008. India deployed thousands of troops in ...
