The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted that at the Seattle meeting from November 30 to December 3, the US hopes to complete the Uruguay Round's drive to unify international trade rules and extend trade liberalisation to new service and high-tech sectors.

India's position, according to the CSIS, was "exactly the opposite". New Delhi's endeavour was to "reinvigorate special protections for developing countries."

The CSIS nonetheless acknowledged that India's position "overlaps with the US view in at least two sensitive areas - eliminating agricultural export subsidies and liberalising the information technology (IT) trade." It said rapidly growing Indian IT firms are likely to push the government hard to avoid creating roadblocks "to their spectacular export growth." The report also said the intellectual property dispute, "resolved in principle some years ago, is unlikely to prove a major trouble spot."

It said the major analysis commissioned a year ago by the government of its own interests in trade in services was likely to soften New Delhi's position on some service areas. "Passage of the insurance bill, which although not as comprehensive as the United States hoped it would be, signals the government's intent to continue with new liberalisation measures," it added.

Hence, the report said, "given India's increasing economic dependence on a range of cutting-edge sectors, a pragmatic approach will probably win out, although there may be an extended period of fairly sterile debate before this happens."

But it reiterated that the real test would come in the negotiations that follow Seattle. "The most successful negotiators in the Uruguay Round," the CSIS said, "were countries that set priorities and came to the table ready to deal."

But India's business conglomerates and many of its trade negotiators, on the other hand, are more accustomed "to doling out concessions in small dollops."Thus, the report warned, if "India's post-Seattle discussions remain primarily a defensive effort to move back to the trade rules of an earlier generation, with their familiar principled defenses of 'special and differential treatment', they are likely to fail while missing the chance to move the world economy forward."

Other countries of SAARC were paying much less attention to the WTO meeting, with the exception of Bangladesh, "which is looking for support for preserving beyond 2005 the textile quota regime from which its industry has benefitted." India Abraod News Service American initiatives aimed at developing countries, the report said, focus on special regions such as the Caribbean Basin, Africa and the least developed economies.

The European Union (EU), recognising that its agricultural export subsidies will be targeted by many WTO members, wants an integrated final agreement to ensure adequate compensation outside of the farm sector for any agricultural concessions it makes, the report said.

India's proposals aimed at reviving special treatment for all developing countries, were scaled back during and after the Uruguay Round, it recalled. "It opposes bringing labour standards and environmental issues into the WTO" and would be once again "pushing a labour mobility initiative." While acknowledging that many Indian positions "will have resonance with other developing countries," the report said that as during the Uruguay Round, "the developing countries are likely to focus on their specific concerns rather than act as a bloc."