India has asked the United States and the European Union to focus on the interests of poorer countries in global trade talks or risk seeing the current round of negotiations being a "suicide round".
"We do hope that the United States and the European Union will recognise that this is a development round and not look for this to be a suicide round," Commerce and Industry
Minister Kamal Nath said as he arrived for the two-day closed-door meeting at the London School of Economics on Friday.
The talks were held even as demonstrators dressed as sharks staged a protest to highlight the absence of developing countries from the discussions, which aimed to break the impasse over the Doha round of World Trade Organisations' talks.
However, Brazil's foreign minister said he did not expect a breakthrough from the meeting of the most influential members of the WTO who were trying to revive deadlocked talks aimed at agreeing on a binding trade liberalization pact by the end of this year.
The Doha round of trade talks, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, sets out to boost the global economy and lift millions worldwide out of poverty by lowering trade barriers across all sectors - with particular emphasis on developing countries.
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