THE United States plans to negotiate an agreement with the European Union, Japan and 18 other economies to remove trade and investment barriers in services ranging from finance to express delivery after having explored the idea of launching talks on an International Services Agreement for nearly a year.

Big emerging countries like China, India, Brazil and Russia have turned away from the talks as according to them the services negotiations should be part of a bigger discussion that includes agriculture and manufacturing trade barriers. The Doha round of world trade talks, which began in 2001 and include all three components, remains hopeless, deadlocked and has triggered the United States to explore other options.

The Geneva based services negotiations will include Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the EU, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the United States, Kirk said in the letter to Congress. The group represents nearly two thirds of global services and the United States hopes other countries will eventually decide to join the talks.US intends to begin talks on the pact within the next 90 days and will press for rules to promote services trade over the Internet as part of the talks.