Trade ministers who gathered in Sydney last week for an informal meeting of the WTO say the talks were very productive, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

It noted that the meeting ended on Friday with an agreement by the 25 trade ministers to allow poorer countries to manufacture much-needed medicines at an affordable rate to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS. The deal will be finalized by the end of this year. The next round of talks will be in the Mexican city of Cancun next year.

Indian Minister for Disinvestment Arun Shourie said the deal was a breakthrough. "On that there was the least disagreement—actually everyone endorsed the need for urgently meeting the deadline of December 31," Shourie said.

Also reporting, the Financial Times and Les Echos of France note that the deal represents a diplomatic victory for developing countries, which dominate the WTO's membership and had viewed an agreement as an acid test of the WTO's commitment to making development the centerpiece of the trade round. Details of the compromise must still be thrashed out by diplomats in Geneva. But representatives of industrialized and developing countries said the meeting in Sydney had narrowed differences to a point where an agreement was now likely before the end of next month. Partial implementation could be possible next year.

Under the compromise, developed countries have agreed to demands by poorer countries that the WTO agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property regulations (TRIPS) be amended to allow imports of generic drugs to treat HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis. In addition, developed countries have suggested they will allow the provision to be extended to other serious public health problems, to be identified by the affected developing state.

However, the country where the generic producer is based, as well as the one importing the drug, would have to agree to override a medicine's patent. Developing countries and international aid agencies had wanted the decision left to the importing country alone.

"This makes the needy importing country unacceptably dependent on the political will of another government, and increases the administrative burden," said aid agencies Oxfam and M