EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab and counterparts from Australia, Brazil, India and Japan were due to hold talks on Monday evening at the WTO's Geneva base.

WTO chief Pascal Lamy, who is trying to hone down differences among the organisation's key players, was also scheduled to take part, said Aurelia Blin, spokeswoman for the global body.

The Geneva meeting comes in the wake of related talks on the sidelines of the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) -- the world's leading industrialised powers -- in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

On Sunday, the G8, which comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, set a mid-August deadline for negotiators to thrash out the broad outlines of a deal to help finish almost five years of struggling negotiations.

"We expect everyone to translate the political commitments they made in Saint Petersburg into real flexibilities," Fabian Delcros, spokesman for the EU's trade embassy at the WTO, told AFP.

The Doha Round negotiations, which kicked off in the Qatari capital in 2001, are meant to yield a wide-ranging treaty that will tear down trade barriers such as subsidies and customs duties and harness global commerce to improve the lot of the developing world.

The round was meant to end in 2004, but that target was later pushed back to December 2006 because of persistent disputes between rich and poor nations over the relative concessions required.

Developing countries are targetting the subsidies paid to farmers in rich countries, particularly the United States, which critics say skew commerce in favour of American agribusiness, as well as the customs duties levied by the European Union.