WTO talks go the wire as India holds out Talks to salvage what would be the first global trade deal in almost two decades entered a frenzied final day on Friday with India holding out against heavy pressure to cut a deal. Roberto Azevêdo, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, told a meeting of delegation heads from all 159 members gathered in Bali that a deal had yet to be struck. But he told them a deal was "very close" and still possible, a spokesman said, and immediately moved into a series of meetings aimed at resolving the impasse. Those discussions with a small number of key participants including India's commerce minister, Anand Sharma, and US Trade Representative Michael Froman were expected to last late into the night on Friday, said Keith Rockwell, the WTO's spokesman. "It will be a long day," he said. He added that Mr Azevêdo had told members that if they were called to a wider meeting earlier than Friday night it would likely be because a deal had failed. The stalemate set the stage for a higher-level lobbying campaign. Pope Francis" representative to the WTO urged all parties to back an interim deal on Thursday. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, and German chancellor Angela Merkel were among the national leaders preparing to call India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on Friday to lobby for a deal. At issue are the terms of a "peace clause" designed to give negotiators more time to draft an agreement on the WTO rules that apply to government programmes to offer subsidised food to the poor. How long the ceasefire would apply is the key sticking point. India, together with a small group of other developing countries including South Africa, want that ceasefire to endure until a permanent solution is negotiated, however long that may take. The US and the EU both want it to have a fixed term, now four years. At stake is the credibility of the WTO and a broader deal backed heavily by business groups around the world that would establish binding rules for the removal of red tape at national frontiers. Some estimates have put its benefit to the global economy at up to $1tn. Were WTO ministers to fail to strike a deal in Bali it would be a major blow to the body's credibility. On the table is a small portion of the long-stalled Doha Round that ministers nominated as low-hanging fruit two years ago. A common theme among the ministerial statements in Bali this week has been the view that failure on the Indonesian resort island would be a potentially fatal blow to the WTO's role in trade negotiations. It would cede the way to the sort of "mega-regional" agreements that the US is now negotiating with 11 other Pacific Rim countries and the EU. Ministers from the US, Japan, and 10 other countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks are due to gather in Singapore on Saturday for four days of discussions that could seal what would amount to the biggest non-multilateral trade deal the US has ever signed. In a statement presented in Bali on Thursday, Pope Francis" representative to the WTO, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, warned the trend towards such regional agreements would impair the global battle against poverty and inequality. "Certainly, the enlargement of regional trade agreements is a step towards further trade liberalisation but we have to bear in mind that these agreements inevitably threaten the desirability to reach an agreement on a truly multilateral basis," the archbishop said. Most importantly, we know that only the multilateral system is a clear, equitable system that provides effective guarantees for small and poor countries that tend to be penalised in a regional trade agreement where it is asymmetric.