The lat­est dead­line for the Doha round of world trade talks is set at 2010. The prob­lem is, many dead­lines in this round of talks have come and gone.

The head of the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion tried to put some heat on world lead­ers to start talk­ing and mak­ing con­ces­sions in remarks made today. How­ever, hopes are dim unless world lead­ers espe­cially those in Wash­ing­ton are seri­ous in compromising.

From Reuters, writer Jonathan Lynn gives us this round up of opinions.

WTO Director-General Pas­cal Lamy said coun­tries were mak­ing some progress in the lat­est inten­sive nego­ti­a­tions in Geneva in areas such as facil­i­tat­ing trade and the tech­ni­cal work nec­es­sary to imple­ment an even­tual deal in agriculture.

“But I also believe it will be dif­fi­cult to get to 2010 with­out a seri­ous accel­er­a­tion of the pace,” Lamy said.

“We need to see real nego­ti­a­tions emerge, not only infor­mal con­sul­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions, but real exchanges among mem­bers,” the French­man told the WTO’s Gen­eral Council.

Lead­ers of the G20 rich and emerg­ing coun­tries called at their sum­mit in Pitts­burgh last month for the Doha round, now in its eighth year, to be com­pleted in 2010.

That was the lat­est in a series of calls to fin­ish the longest run­ning trade round, launched in late 2001 to open mar­kets and help devel­op­ing coun­tries pros­per through trade.

But the high-level polit­i­cal exhor­ta­tions have not been matched by com­pro­mise and move­ment in the Geneva talks, lead­ing many to ques­tion whether the lead­ers are sin­cere in their call for real negotiations.

“Tech­ni­cally the work is almost done. What we are miss­ing now is polit­i­cal will,” said Egypt’s trade min­is­ter, Rachid Mohamed Rachid.

Rachid, echo­ing a view held by many emerg­ing nations and rich coun­tries alike, said the prob­lem was that Wash­ing­ton — the key to any deal — was not engag­ing fully in the talks.

“The United States has not made their posi­tion clear yet vis-a-vis trade,” he told a meet­ing of the Arab-Swiss Cham­ber of Com­merce in response to a ques­tion from Reuters.

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