GENEVA, May 1 -- The World Health Organisation said yesterday that divided member states want up to a year of further negotiations on the missing piece of an international agreement on handling future pandemics.

After a week of grindingly slow progress in talks at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, countries came to a stop and will decide on the next steps at the annual assembly of member states, to be held in the Swiss city from May 18 to 23.

Wealthy countries and developing nations are at loggerheads over how the pandemic treaty, which was adopted last year, will work in practice.

The agreement's unfinalised Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) mechanism deals with sharing access to pathogens with pandemic potential, then sharing ...