He says a global trade pact is still possible this year.

Earlier, WTO Agriculture chair Crawford Falconer released a paper detailing his thoughts on the Doha Round of global trade talks which collapsed in Geneva last month.

He says members in Geneva were prepared to accept compromises that were not generally their preferred options.

But Falconer said the meeting could not secure an outcome.

Pascal Lamy was speaking on Tuesday at at the opening of the Global Partnership for Development conference in New Delhi, claiming 'we have never been so close to an agreement'.

"What Ministers and senior officials managed to achieve in the week they spent in Geneva late in July is absolutely remarkable," Lamy says.

"In purely technical terms, the issues already agreed to by the group of Ministers with whom I was holding the most intensive consultations would be sufficient for the drafting of schedules of commitments in Agriculture and NAMA.

"The political reality, nonetheless, is that we must wrap up a few remaining issues, and build consensus amongst all members, before we can start the scheduling process, which would lead to the conclusion of the Round."

Among these few remaining issues, the most difficult one is the question of the Agricultural Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries.

This proved be impossible to reconcile during the meeting in July.

There are two divergent views on the SSM, one that the safeguard should be easy to use, the other that it should be subject to conditions and limitations.

"In spite of these differences, what members told us very clearly during the plenary meetings held at the end of the talks, is that the negotiations should not be abandoned at this point," Lamy says.

"In the view of our members, too much has been achieved now, to simply leave it aside."