Denis Staunton,

in Brussels

The European Commission has welcomed a call by the United States for a resumption of negotiations in the Doha round of world trade talks.

A spokeswoman for the Trade Commissioner, Mr Pascal Lamy, said the EU hoped that Washington's renewed enthusiasm meant the trade round could be completed on schedule by the end of this year.

"We hope this is going to pave the way for more talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) so that we can complete these talks by the agreed date, if possible by the end of 2004," she said.

The Commission declined to respond to a call by the US Trade Representative, Mr Robert Zoellick, for the EU to set a date for the end of all agricultural export subsidies. Before negotiations collapsed at a WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun last September, the EU insisted that last year's ambitious reform of agricultural subsidies left the EU with little room for compromise on agriculture.

Since Cancun, the EU has quietly abandoned efforts to add the so-called "Singapore issues" to the WTO agenda, accepting that any agreement on such issues as competition and investment would be "plurilateral", or voluntary, rather than multilateral.

The EU and the US blamed a new coalition of large developing countries for the collapse of talks at Cancun but many observers believe that the EU's strategy was flawed. An early move to restore negotiations would create an added responsibility for Ireland's EU Presidency, which scarcely mentioned the WTO in its work programme for the next six months.