Brussels, 26/09/2007 (Agence Europe) - Addressing journalists at the Brussels conference on Tuesday 25 September, Director General of DG Trade at the European Commission David O'Sullivan underlined the risk of the WTO becoming submerged by a wave of conflicts it will have to arbitrate if multilateral negotiations on world trade fail. O'Sullivan affirmed: “If we don't get a deal…there will be a proliferation of cases which could put the dispute mechanism system under major strain” and added: “I don't think you can expect the WTO dispute settlement mechanism to solve all the problems we failed to solve through negotiation (multilateral)”. According to O'Sullivan, the Doha negotiations are arriving at “a natural end point where I think most people can see what is the shape of a possible deal”. He concluded: “If we don't get the breakthrough by the end of this year, it would be difficult to imagine doing this deal any time soon”. Last week the US revived the hope of an agreement when they said that they were prepared to negotiate on the basis of the Falconer/Stephenson draft compromise on liberalising modalities for trade in agricultural and manufactured products (EUROPE 9506). (eh)