The head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has sounded the alarm over the slow pace of the negotiations at the Geneva-based trade body, with just three months to go before WTO states are supposed to conclude some key deals.

Supachai Panitchpakdi told member states last week that he was beginning to "have doubts" that the deadline would be met and that the next few weeks would be crucial to the WTO's Doha Round of free trade negotiations.

"At this rate, we will not make it ... if we are not making substantive progress in May, we will be in a crisis," he said.

Ministers from some two dozen of the WTO's 148 member states, including the United States, the European Union, Brazil and India, will meet on the fringes of the annual Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) gathering.

Failure to meet the July deadline would jeopardise the chances of ministers from the full WTO membership signing off on a draft deal for the round at their next conference in Hong Kong in December, itself a crucial step if the negotiations are to be completed in 2006 as planned.

"Negotiations are lagging ... We must re-energise and sharpen the focus," said new US Trade Representative Rob Portman, who will be facing his first test as an international trade negotiator since taking over from Robert Zoellick.

The ministerial get-together, which is set for Wednesday afternoon, will be preceded by a series of smaller huddles, notably between officials from the United States, the EU, Australia, Brazil and India, on Monday and Tuesday.

The group of five helped clear the way for the July 2004 accords, with which the WTO put the round back on track after it was derailed by the failure of the last ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico, in September of the previous year.

But the optimism created by the "July package" has evaporated.

Negotiators are bogged down in how to slash rich state farm subsidies, to give developing country producers a better deal, and open up markets across the globe for consumer and industrial goods and services, such as telecommunications and tourism.

The World Bank has calculated that conclusion of the round could boost global incomes by $500 billion a year, if it lowers trade barriers, particularly between developing countries.

High on the list of pressing issues is a technical, but vitally important argument between rich nation farm goods importers, such as the European Union and Switzerland, and exporting countries over calculating tariffs.