"It's not mission impossible," Lamy told the paper, referring to the Doha Round of talks launched by the WTO in the Qatari capital in late 2001.

"Everybody will have to move," he added, while admitting that current "positions are too different" to allow for an agreement soon.

Ruling out an accord among WTO member states when they gather in Hong Kong next month, Lamy said, "it is better to stage Hong Kong as a step forward rather than a big, make-or-break, brinkmanship aim."

"The areas that are most visible, agriculture, industrial tariffs and services, are only the most important part of that. Many issues remain: anti-dumping, regional trade, and trade and environment," he said.

The "WTO is a big truck, not a Formula One car," he added.

"After Seattle, it took nearly two years to produce proposals, after Cancun it was nearly one year," he said referring to earlier meetings in Canada and Mexico.

The European Union's top official Jose Manuel Barroso had said Sunday that next month's World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong were headed for failure chiefly because of the intransigence of Brazil and the United States.

Europe had put forward proposals that were a "very important step" and it was up to countries such as the United States and Brazil to make concessions, Barroso told Europe 1 radio and the TV5 television channel.

"If they don't move in the areas of services and agriculture, it could be that there will be failure," Barroso said.