"It's not mission impossible at all," he told the British newspaper Independent in an interview published on Monday.

Lamy's remarks follow a decision last week from key players in the Doha Trade talks that they are too far apart to hope to reach a comprehensive agreement at next month's crucial Hong Kong ministerial meet.

Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, who participated in a meeting of G-4 nations in London last week, had said WTO members may have to downgrade goals for Hong Kong Ministerial without affecting the overall Doha round launched in 2001.

Lamy has appealed for compromise over the deadlocked talks. Ruling out an agreement, Lamy said, "It was better to stage Hong Kong as a step forward rather than a big make-or-break brinkmanship aim, the risk of which was failure. "Look what happened after Seattle or Cancun. After Seattle it took nearly two years to produce proposals, after Cancun it was nearly one year. I don't think we can afford this."

"If ministers think that jumping to the two-thirds level in one jump is not available, let's work out at this stage that we have one more step forward rather than one step backward," Lamy added.