New Delhi, April 21 -- The US wants India to give preferential access to American farm goods on the principle of "reciprocity" in an early harvest deal under a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement, while New Delhi seeks "fair and equitable" treatment factoring India's relative development stage, according to people in the know.

The US is keen to adopt a sectoral, broad-based, macro approach for resolving tariff and non-tariff issues pertaining to goods for expeditious resolution instead of negotiators picking individual products, which, the Americans feel, would be time-taking, the people said, requesting anonymity. The Indian side is, however, cautious that sectoral reduction of tariffs in one go could also involve certain sensitive ...