He was making an intervention at an informal pre-Seattle ministerial meeting of key WTO members in Lausanne (Switzerland) on Monday.

Maran said that the agenda for the Seattle meet should be balanced and developing country-friendly which alone could contribute to development. The issues of implementation of the Uruguay Round agreements must also be addressed upfront and key imbalances in the existing ones be removed.

The review process currently underway or due shortly should reconsider the full impact of limiting policy options on the competitiveness of developing countries, particularly in respect of subsidies, intellectual property rights and trade-related investment measures.

The minister said that developing countries must be assured that when their interests were at stake, the WTO system would respond positively to fully address their concerns.

Special and differential treatment for developing countries as a means of guaranteeing them adequate flexibility should be made a part of the contractual obligations of the rule-based system.

Elaborating on India's concerns, Maran said: "We have heard several calls for a development round and of development being at the core of the agenda. If this is to be realised, then it must be ensured that the WTO system subserves development and does not subvert it".

He said that India was strongly opposed to non-trade issues which only had tenuous links with trade being brought into the agenda of the WTO. To deal with extraneous objects on the basis of principles governing commercial transactions and based on the sole reasoning of trade advantage could ultimately distort development itself.

He referred in particular to proposals to broaden the scope of WTO's mandate by having disciplines on investment per se as well as labour standards and environmental concerns being sought to be used to protect domestic industry.

Emphasising the need to ensure fairness and equity in the WTO system from the viewpoint of developing countries, Maran said: "We are not talking here merely of provisions relating to special and differential treatment for developing countries, which had largely consisted of longer transitional periods and technical assistance which even by themselves are both inadequate and insufficient".