Leaders of world's 20 most advanced and advancing countries have directed their trade negotiators

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to conclude a balanced and ambitious multilateral agreement for opening global markets as fast as possible.

India, along with other key developing countries like China, Brazil and South Africa, has been pressing for completion of the nine-year-old negotiations for a new global trade pact.

In their declaration yesterday after a two-day summit here, the leaders of G-20 nations, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, extended support for bringing the Doha Development Round talks of World Trade Organisation to a balanced and ambitious conclusion as soon as possible.

The World Trade Organisation, had launched a negotiating round at the Qatari capital in 2001 to reach a new trade agreement for opening the world commerce.

But differences over market access and protection to industry by the developed and developing nations have stalled the deal among 153 WTO member countries.

Negotiators have missed several deadlines and a new ambition to conclude the agreement within this year appears difficult to achieve.

"We direct our representatives, using all negotiating avenues, to pursue this objective and to report on progress at our next meeting in Seoul, where we will discuss the status of the negotiations and the way forward," the declaration said.

The Seoul summit is scheduled on November 11-12 this year.

The document said while the global economic crisis led to the sharpest decline of trade in more than 70 years, G-20 countries chose

to keep markets open to the opportunities that trade and investment offer. "It was the right choice."

The world trade contracted sharply from the last quarter of 2008, and in 2009 fell by an unprecedented 12 per cent. The ratio of global trade to GDP had also declined by one-third, according to the WTO