India and ASEAN are concerned over the stalemate in WTO talks but the solution lies with developed countries, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said in Singapore.

"Key to the lock of the (WTO) deadlock is not in our hands. The key is with the developed countries," Nath said.

Nath, who is here to attend the ASEAN Economic Community and Dialogue partners meeting, held discussions with ministers from Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam.

He said the countries have expressed concern over the fate of the WTO talks and agreed that officials from member countries should engage in taking the talks forward.

Saying that it will be difficult to say when the next WTO Ministerial Meeting will be held, Nath said India wants to see the talks resume next week. The minister is expected to meet EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson on September 12.

The mini-ministerial meeting of 30 trade ministers in Geneva collapsed last month over differences between the rich and developing countries - primarily the US and India and China - on the issue of protection for poor farmers from import surges.

He said the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) is an issue of livelihood security, and not to serve the commercial interests of rich countries.

Emphasising that there can be no trade-off between livelihood security and commercial interests, he said, "I cannot negotiate how many farmers can commit suicide."

Other key issues like cotton subsidies, geographical indications, flexibility in industrial products, fisheries subsidies and tariff simplification still need to be addressed.

"We cannot minimise any of those issues and make a wrong headline. The headline issue is subsidies, headline issue is the product-specific caps," he said.

Nath said the breakdown of the Geneva talks should be treated as a pause, and not a collapse. "Let us make sure that this pause is a useful pause," he said adding that multilateral talks "never fail, they only pause. That is how I perceive it."

He expressed optimism that there will be some forward movement "from Geneva in every area."

India's attitude is not defensive, Nath said. "I am not looking at it as a game, and I am not looking at it as planned. Everybody says there is so much on the table. But I feel that what is on the table should also be on my plate," he said.