Lula said he would speak to China’s president, Hu Jintao, during a planned visit to the Asian nation which hosts the Olympic Games starting Friday. He said he would also talk to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and possibly British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"Something abnormal happened, in my opinion, during the Doha Round. We were so close to making an agreement and it didn’t happen because of minor issues," he said.

Ministers from about 35 key World Trade Organization countries reached about 80-85 percent of an outline for a trade deal on the core areas of agriculture and industrial goods.

But differences in these areas between rich and poor countries and importers and exporters proved too much to bridge.

The final stumbling block concerned the "special safeguard mechanism" -- a proposal to let developing countries raise farm tariffs in the face of a surge in imports or collapse in prices.

Developing countries like India and Indonesia said they needed the measure to protect millions of subsistence farmers from unexpected shocks arising from opening up their borders.

But the United States feared its agribusinesses would lose new markets just as it made painful cuts in its farm subsidies.

Brazil, one of the world’s leading farm exporters, was a key player in the round as a leader of developing countries.

(Reporting by Raymond Colitt and Fernanda Ezabella; writing by Peter Murphy; editing by Mohammad Zargham)