GENEVA -- World Trade Organization (WTO) Chief Supachai Panitchpakdi says he is confident year-end deadlines for deals on issues dearest to developing countries can be met, boosting global free trade talks.

"I think we can build up momentum, we are moving in that direction," he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday before flying to Australia for a trade ministers' meeting.

In particular, Supachai said he noted "real urgency" in the search for an accord on access to cheap medicines for poor countries facing health emergencies such as AIDS, Reuters reported.

The drugs issue, together with the question of easier terms for poorer countries to help them adapt to tough trading rules, must be resolved by the end of December if world trade talks are to stay on track to conclude by the end of 2004.

The talks were launched last November in Doha, Qatar, and development was formally put at the center of the agenda. The real bargaining is only just beginning.

Apart from the year-end deadline on drugs and so-called "special and differential treatment" for poorer states, the WTO's 145 member countries must agree by March 2003 on the framework for negotiations on thorny issues like farm trade.

"The end-year package, if we can conclude it, will give us momentum for the March deadline in areas such as agriculture and services," Supachai said.

But the former Thai deputy prime minister, who took over the WTO helm from New Zealand's Mike Moore in September, said member states must not let themselves be side-tracked by a flurry of regional and bilateral free trade agreements.

"We really have to be careful what we are getting into because it is all becoming a bit confusing," he said. Many of the bilateral deals involve the United States.

Supachai, the first developing country official to head the WTO or its predecessors, also said he would work more closely with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), many of whom brand the Geneva-based body as a servant of the rich states.

He noted some NGOs were highly suspicious of moves to open up trade in services such as water, health and education as well as the financial sectors like banks and insurance, all part of the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS).

"Some NGOs ... fear that we will be easing the transnationals into the poor countries' economies. But this is not so, this is not the intention of the WTO," he said.

The GATS is one of the top targets for anti-globalization protests around this week's meeting in Australia.

But Supachai said the pact was "probably something that is not properly understood". It was voluntary and "would not touch on the domestic rules of countries that did not want it".

Supachai said he doubted the meeting of trade ministers in Sydney on today and tomorrow would produce any decisions on the negotiations.

"It will be mainly stocktaking," he said, noting that only around a quarter of the countries in the WTO -- where the European Union speaks for all 15 of its member states -- would be represented.