"We hope to get the basic framework of modalities by end-March, April," Lamy, on a whistle-stop visit to India, told a news conference.

He added that India and the EU had "converged on the idea of pushing forward negotiations".

"Perhaps we are now in the pre-Hong Kong era, the site of the next WTO ministerial (meeting) I hope later this year," said Lamy, who was on the second leg of a three-nation Asian swing.

Lamy's visit to India was his first since the collapse of WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico, in September over the elimination of agricultural export subsidies in rich nations and proposals to extend the WTO mandate to cross-border investment.

India, China and Brazil banded together with a few other countries to oppose what they considered an accord forced on them by rich nations on such issues as trade, investment, competition and government spending.

A deadline to conclude a new round of global market-opening measures by the end of 2004 has looked elusive since the failure of the Cancun talks.

The EU official, who is keen to make progress on a fresh WTO ministerial meeting before his term ends in November, held detailed talks with Indian Trade Minister Arun Jaitley.

Jaitley, speaking at the same news conference, said he joined Lamy "in saying the process must move on".

"Engagement must continue and we must expedite it because getting the multilateral trading system to survive is perhaps in the interest of all of us," Jaitley said.

The minister, however, sounded a note of caution, saying the developed world "must be sensitive to the fact India has 600 million people for whom agriculture is a matter of food security."

Lamy said in a speech earlier to businessmen he hoped Europeans had "sufficiently demonstrated our willingness to move forward on agriculture" through proposals such as slashing import tariffs by more than a third.

Lamy added also the Europeans were concerned about access to the Indian market for services, calling an Indian offer "frankly a disappointment".

No details were immediately available about what the Indian offer had contained.

Lamy's visit came after he attended an international conference in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, attended by representatives from 37 nations including India, China and France but not the United States.