GENEVA: The United States won an appeal on Thursday at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in a dispute over extra duties on Indian imports of wines and spirits. The US victory is largely moral as India has already lifted most of the additional charges.

In a mixed ruling, the WTO appeal court refrained from making any recommendations to India to make further changes in its import rules. Both the United States and India had appealed the original ruling in June which rejected a US claim that India was illegally imposing extra duties on imported alcoholic products.

The WTO Appellate Body reversed the panel's finding that the United States had failed to prove that the extra charges broke international trade rules. The United States, the world's third biggest exporter of spirits and sixth biggest of wine, had complained that extra duties imposed by India on alcohol imports broke its tariff commitments at the WTO.

It said the combined charges meant that U.S. alcoholic beverages faced duties as high as 550 percent, effectively shutting them out of the growing Indian market. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States estimates that India's spirits market was worth $16.2 billion in 2006, making it one of the biggest in the world, but imports account for less than 1 percent of that.