Delegates from the 147-member trading group met here to discuss a July deadline to agree on a framework for particularly contentious topics, notably the fate of agricultural subsidies.

They are under mounting pressure to produce tangible results to wrap-up the so-called Doha round of trade talks by January 1, 2005.

"It was an exploratory meeting. The idea was what are we going to do in July, what kind of a package are we going to have," said India's ambassador to the WTO, KM Chandr-asekhar.

"We need to start thinking about the July package in its entirety at this point, but it will take more time before we focus and start zeroing in on issues," he told reporters after the informal gathering of the General Council.

"There are a whole lot of meetings that are going to take place in May and I think that will also feed into the process here."

In London on Friday, a small group of top diplomats from the United States, the European Union and a few other nations are due to meet for a private discussion on how to make progress with the trade round, which has been on hold since a failed ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico last September.

The meeting would precede another gathering of about 30 WTO member states on the sidelines of an OECD conference in Paris on May 14, said Eduardo Perez Motta, the WTO ambassador for Mexico, which will chair the mini-ministerial.

"The issues that should be discussed are the ones that will be part of (the July package)," Perez Motta said.

The four main themes would be farming, non-agricultural market access, cotton and the "Singapore" issues -- trade facilitation, transparency in government procurement, cross-border investment and competition, he added.

At the half-day meeting in Geneva, a majority of WTO member states supported a proposal to handle the four Singapore issues individually, with trade facilitation looking the most likely to remain a part of the round while the other three themes would be dropped for the time being, diplomats said.

The mini-ministerial in Paris would likely gather ministers from OECD states as well as countries such as Brazil, Chile, India and South Africa along with WTO director general Supachai Panitchpakdi, the Mexican ambassador said.

In addition, the WTO's least developed members are due to gather in Senegal while the African Group will meet in Rwanda before a formal gathering of the General Council, the WTO's executive body, in Geneva on May 17 and 18.