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Leaders of the Group of Eight major industrial countries on Sunday recommended a two-week extension for a deadline aimed at breaking the impasse over long-stalled global trade negotiations.

Group of Eight leaders met key developing countries on Monday to give a push to world trade talks at a big-power summit strained by divisions over the Middle East.

Trade ministers from the U.S. and five other World Trade Organization members have agreed at a meeting today (July 17) to gather again twice this month in Geneva in an effort to push the struggling WTO talks forward.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) is to stage countrywide general strikes in August to halt removal of industrial tariffs which are expected to open up markets and destroy more jobs and industries.

Leaders of the major world powers face a packed agenda including trade talks and a possible statement on world oil prices on Monday, the last day of a G8 summit overshadowed by violence in the Middle East.

Leading industrial powers will aim to move forward the global trade negotiations, which failed at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in June, when they meet at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, from tomorrow. Development and environment groups as well as trade unions condemn this as illegitimate.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab last Friday (July 7) insisted the only Doha deal the U.S. will accept is an ambitious one, and stressed that this requires a definition of how sensitive agriculture products will be treated so that members will know exactly how much market access they are to get.

Commerce & industry minister Kamal Nath on Wednesday said that India cannot offer further market access in agriculture and industrial goods sector, till developed countries agree to reduce agriculture subsidies substantially.

The EU must pursue an aggressive agenda to open foreign markets to its goods and services even if the current round of world trade liberalisation talks is successful, according to a paper drawn up by the directorate-general of Peter Mandelson, the European commissioner for trade.

There has been an unusually quiet atmosphere at the World Trade Organisation since the Ministerial-level meetings ended on 1 July without substantive result.