The negotiations, the Doha Round launched at the end of 2001, "are in trouble", he told envoys from the WTO's 148 member nations after a week of talks in Geneva which ran into roadblocks on key issues of farm and goods tariffs.

"The crisis that threatens is all the more menacing because it is not a crisis of dramatic divergences ... It is a crisis of immobility," declared Supachai, just back in Geneva from the Group of Eight (G8) meeting of industrial powers in Scotland.

He told a meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), the Round's steering body, that quick action was vital to get the negotiations -- facing what diplomats say is a final deadline at the end of 2006 -- back on track.

"There is still a slender chance of averting it (the crisis), but every hour must be made to count," said Supachai, who hands over the WTO helm at the end of August to former European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy.

Trade sources said his remarks to the TNC echoed what he told leaders of the G8 and the Group of Five (G5) nations -- China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa -- at their Scotland summit in Gleneagles earlier in the week.

He would be encouraged, they said, by a call on Friday from the G8 chiefs -- who include US President George W Bush and leaders of four European Union states -- for urgent work to complete the round on time and a pledge to cut farm subsidies.

But Supachai is known to feel that such ringing declarations by top leaders often fail to find reflection in the positions taken by their negotiators in Geneva.

And trade analysts said that the G8 stance on farm export subsidies in rich nations -- that there should be a "credible date" for them to be abolished -- was unlikely to satisfy many developing countries, especially some of the poorest.

Although G8 chairman and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he believed a December WTO ministers' meeting in Hong Kong could agree to end the subsidies by 2010, there was clearly still resistance to that within the EU, the analysts said.

In his Friday remarks, Supachai said he would be looking for clear guidance "on crucial political issues" from trade ministers from some 30 WTO nations representing all levels of economic development in Dalian, China on July 12 and 13.