UPDATE 1-U.S. "not expecting good news" at WTO meeting on Indian row

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(Reuters) - World Trade Organization ambassadors met late on Thursday with less than three hours to persuade India to drop its objections to the first global trade deal in two decades, but U.S. envoy Michael Punke said he was not optimistic of a breakthrough.

"I'm not expecting good news but I'll go listen," he told Reuters as he entered the meeting in Geneva. Another senior ambassador said: "It's difficult, very difficult."

India's Ambassador Anjali Prasad declined to comment.

Other trade diplomats said that they did not know what to expect from the meeting but suspected there was too little time left to meet India's demand that the WTO put on hold the adoption of an global agreement on streamlining customs rules.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/india-trade-wto-meeting-idINL6N0Q67IS20140731

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1. India's demands block $1 trillion WTO deal on customs rules

(Reuters) - The World Trade Organization failed on Thursday to reach a deal to standardise customs rules, which would have been the first global trade reform in two decades but was blocked by India's demands for concessions on agricultural stockpiling.

"We have not been able to find a solution that would allow us to bridge that gap," WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo told trade diplomats in Geneva just two hours before the final deadline for a deal.

"Of course it is true that everything remains in play until midnight, but at present there is no workable solution on the table, and I have no indication that one will be forthcoming."

The deadline passed without a breakthrough. WTO ministers had already agreed the global reform of customs procedures known as "trade facilitation" last December, but it needed to be put into the WTO rule book by July 31.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/08/01/india-trade-wto-idINKBN0G02GV20140801