Brussels / Geneva, 18/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Director General of the World Trade Organisation, Supachai Panichpakdi, calls on the participants at the Doha Round to come out of their defensive positions. "We no longer have time to wait for the others to take the first move", he told the ambassadors of the 145, presenting his report on the state of progress of negotiations. According to Mr Supachaï, who presides the Round's Steering Committee, the subjects which cause the greatest division remain agriculture, the special and differentiated treatment to be reserved for developing countries, the implementation of commitments taken during the previous round of talks, trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) and public health, on which negotiators' attention will focus until the end of this year. "We have important deadlines before us in coming months and, if we leave too many things to be settled in Cancún (Ed.: where the next WTO ministerial meeting is to be held in September 2003), I believe we shall be making our task of achieving successful negotiations practically impossible". It is clear that the talks on certain chapters of the Doha Development Agenda are lacking written contributions, he said, without further comment. Australia, for its part, is highly critical of the European Union and Japan which have still not specified their positions on agriculture. These two key participants at negotiations have not put anything specific forward, which could hold up the progress of the Round, say sources close to the Foreign and Trade Ministry, recalling that the Cairns Group, of which Australia is part, has already revealed its version of the programmed agricultural reform, which can be summarised as a 25% tariff reduction in developed countries and increased access to tariff quotas up to 20% of internal consumption. The United States, for its part, recommends the total elimination of export subsidies on farm products, a reduction of $100 billion annually in internal support and an average tariff reduction of 62 up to 15%. On the particularly sensitive question on the other side of the Atlantic of trade defence rules against unfair practices, the Americans specified, on Thursday, the basic principles of their position, namely: maintaining the strength and effectiveness of trade "remedies", ensuring the transparency of such legislation, strengthening the rules for more effectively countering unfair trade practices for competition, and clarifying the fact that, in the context of disputes over defensive measures, the relevant bodies cannot impose obligations others than those contained in the WTO Agreements and must keep to the rules and procedures provided for this kind of examination.