G-20 tries to break Cancun deadlock New Delhi: In a bid to break the deadlock on multilateral trade issues after the collapse of WTO's Cancun Ministerial, G-20 developing countries on agriculture will hold a meeting with EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and WTO (World Trade Organisation) Director General Suppachai Panitchpakdi on December 12, ahead of the General Council meeting.

The meeting will take place in the Brazilian capital Brassilia.

Speaking at the fourth India-EU Business summit, Commerce and Industry, Special Secretary, S N Menon said the G-20 representatives will also hold a meeting with each other before meeting the EU Commissioner.

The meeting, which is being organised by Brazil, assumes significance as its outcome is likely to reflect upon the General Council beginning on December 15 in Geneva.

Menon said India wants to engage in a constructive and positive dialogue and added that deadlock should be broken to take forward the Doha development agenda.

"We believe in positive engagement...deadlock has to be broken," he said.

India has always been a multilateral player, Menon said, adding that both bilateral and multilateral trading systems fed on each other.

He said agriculture was a very important sector for the country with its 650 million farmers depending on it for survival.

While both EU and India had commonalities of interest in agriculture, he said but they had to move apart at Cancun as New Delhi needed time to reform its agriculture.

PTI