Brussels, 27/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - Suspended since last month, following the failure of the 147 to find an agreement on the deadline planned for 2002, multi-lateral discussions aimed at facilitating the poor's access to essential medicines, will begin again on Tuesday in Geneva. At the same time in Brazil, where European Commissioner Pascal Lamy is currently on an official visit until the end of this week (see EUROPE 24 January p 13), the Commission will outline the solution proposed at the beginning of the month by the EU side, while obviously hoping to gain the support of one of the major players, who is also the main instigator of this round of negotiations (see EUROPE 10 January p 7). The new government, Presided by Luiz Inazio Lula da Silva has not yet given his views about the EU positions that aim not to limit the scope of the obligatory licenses but aim at reaching full agreement on the fact that at least fifteen diseases are automatically covered the EU is asking the opinion of a competent third party in the area for the other diseases, which Brussels explained on Monday, could given the context, be the World Health Organisation. The EU is also insisting on, given the initial critics (sent out by various trade partners and which, for the present, are still unofficial), "not drawing up a short list (exhaustive: Editor's note) of the problems but rather an open with a mechanism to make it work. The country speaking on the African group in these discussions, Kenya, shares a "rather negative" view of the EU proposal but Argentina sees it as "positive" and Washington, which is awaiting the position of developing countries before taking a line on the matter, so far interprets it as being "constructive". The WHO HQ's initial comments have also been "quite encouraging". The same WHO source explained how they had been discussing the proposals with everyone recently and that "the options were still quite open". The WHO also stated that all the elements appeared to be in place for obtaining an area in which agreement could be found on the diseases covered in the compulsory licence mechanism, the very last issue pending and which constituted the stumbling block for the 147 on 21 December.