A deal to open up poor countries' access to cheap drugs looks within reach in Australia, boosting the fight against Aids and a range of other killer diseases, reports BBC Online.

Trade ministers have given themselves till 31 December to find a compromise deal allowing developing countries to make generic copies of patented drugs and export them. Now, said Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile at a World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Sydney, the end is in sight.

Trade ministers from 25 countries on Friday wrapped up "a long and tiring day" at an informal WTO meeting in Sydney, agreeing to work toward meeting trade deadlines, Japan Economic Newswire reports Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile said.

The ministers, including 17 from developed countries, and WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi used the one-day meeting to discuss key issues of the Doha round of global trade talks. Combined, the countries represented made up 80 percent of global gross domestic product.

Although the ministers covered a range of issues, at the end of the day there was no official communique due to the informal nature of the meeting, Vaile told reporters.

The ministers reached a consensus to finalize agreements giving poorer countries access to medicines to fight epidemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, Vaile said. TRIPS seeks to find a solution to intellectual property issues facing WTO members with little or no pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities, with a deadline set for the end of 2002.

"This is not an economic issue, this is a moral obligation that needs to be undertaken by the developed world," Vaile said. The consensus on TRIPS was particularly welcomed by Lesotho Minister of Industry Mpho (Mpho) Meli Malie, who told the meeting 31 percent of his country's population is infected with HIV/AIDS. The ministers also discussed the Doha round's core business of market access to agriculture, industries and services.

The United States is increasing bilateral pressure on poor countries for them to lower or delay local production or import of generic drugs, says Oxfam in a report, reports Liberation (France) meanwhile. This option was ratified in Doha. This US policy could have devastating consequences on million of people as 90 percent of the 40 million people suffering from AIDS do not have access to antiretroviral drugs, the piece says.

Earlier, the Economist Economic Agenda (online) said making progress (on the Doha trade round) will be an uphill task. In some areas, agriculture above all, developments this year have made agreement more elusive, not less. America’s farm bill, providing large extra subsidies to farmers, soured the atmosphere. Developing countries wonder how that squares with the aims of making it easier for poor-country farmers to compete in global markets and have proper access to the domestic markets of the rich countries. Only last month, the European Union appeared to rule out any reform of its massively expensive—and massively distorting—Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) until at least 2006. Yet big changes to the CAP would seem to be a minimum requirement for the EU to deliver on promises made at Doha.

Without a deal on agriculture, Doha will fail, says the piece. That, in stark terms, is the message both from Vaile and from the developing world.

The industrial countries, America and Europe in particular, were the driving force behind the new round. Most developing countries were much less convinced, especially because many of them felt they had had a raw deal from the previous Uruguay round.

The world's poor will be big winners in the trade talks, writes WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi, in the Australian.

In launching the Doha Development Agenda, WTO member governments have for the first time agreed to put development issues at the center of their negotiating agenda. Should things evolve according to plan, governments will strike a deal by January 1, 2005, that will provide the poorest countries with a far more hospitable economic climate in which to tackle the horrific poverty gripping so many of their citizens.

It's worth remembering that exports from developing countries represent a far greater source of revenue than official development assistance and the case for opening markets to products from poor nations is strong. Tariffs in industrial countries are four times higher on products from poor countries than on products from other rich countries. About one-third of products from the poorest countries are hit with tariffs of 15 per cent or more.

The World Bank estimates that paring back barriers to developing country exports could have a profoundly positive affect on poverty alleviation efforts. Reducing these barriers, the Bank says, could spark higher exports, boost income in poor countries by $1.5 trillion and help governments in the developing world to lift about 600 million people out of poverty by 2015. A recent Oxfam report estimates that a 5 per cent increase in developing countries' share of world trade would boost revenues in those countries by an additional $640 billion.

An agreement would mean a tax cut for poor consumers in the industrial world, the further opening of global markets for exports of services and manufactured goods, a reduction in red tape at border entry points and the establishment of measures to better identify and curb corruption in government procurement, Supachai says.

Consumers, farmers, the working poor, development activists, environmentalists, bankers and telecommunications workers all have something to gain from an agreement. If all that still seems somehow insufficient, consider the humanitarian rationale of giving poor countries the gift of opportunity, Supachai says.