Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile, is cautiously optimistic that a new round of trade negotiations will begin this year.

Mr Vaile was speaking at the conclusion of a mini-Ministerial meeting of a cross-section of major WTO Members hosted by Singapore over the weekend.

"With only a few weeks to go to the WTO Ministerial Meeting scheduled for Qatar, there are a number of outstanding issues yet to be resolved. These include agriculture, investment competition and implementation.

"On agriculture, a number of participants appear less ambitious than Australia, other members of the Cairns Group, the U.S. and a large number of developing countries for a negotiating mandate which will lead to fundamental reform of agricultural trade.

"This weekend's discussions have confirmed that agriculture must be a key element of any new negotiating round.  The Chair had made progress towards meeting Australia's ambitions to remove the discrimination in the WTO against agriculture and achieve its integration into the world trading system through fundamental reform.

"Among the other issues discussed in Singapore were developing country demands for further concessions on a range of so called 'implementation' issues, EU proposals for negotiations on investment, competition policy and trade and environment issues, and proposals on government procurement, anti-dumping and other WTO rules.

"Although good progress has been made on services and industrial tariffs, there are still a number of politically sensitive and complex issues where a consensus has yet to emerge", Mr Vaile said.

"One of the reasons for my optimism is that the preparations for the next Ministerial meeting are more advanced than at the same stage leading to Seattle in 1999.

"With time running out, I have urged my colleagues to show political leadership. With the slowdown in the world economy, a new WTO negotiating agenda is now more important than ever," Mr Vaile said.

Ministers discussed preparations for the meeting in Doha scheduled for 9-13 November and reaffirmed their determination to proceed as planned.