Mandelson Hopes for Trade Talks Breakthrough

The EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, today rejected suggestions he should scale down expectations for next month's trade talks in Hong Kong.

Negotiators failed to make much headway after six hours of talks in London yesterday, and the director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy, along with representatives from India and Brazil, broached the idea that next month's ministerial meeting should be reduced in scope.

But Mr Mandelson said a big push would be made in Hong Kong, where the WTO's 148 member states are supposed to produce a detailed blueprint for boosting trade as a way of delivering benefits to poor countries.

"I am not in the business of scaling down ambition," Mr Mandelson said in a statement. "If we do not deliver ambitiously on the Doha round as a whole, we risk losing or compromising Doha's key development component. That is not acceptable to Europe."

The Doha - or development - round, began in the Qatari capital in 2001. After four years, however, negotiators are still unable to break the deadlock over agriculture. The US and the EU, which have come under pressure to slash farm subsidies, want greater access to the manufacturing and service sectors in developing countries.

The Indian trade minister, Kamal Nath, told journalists the WTO might not be able to achieve the full blueprint for a global free trade deal.

"Expectations of Hong Kong will not be, with the availability of time, what they were two months ago," Mr Nath said, adding that this had been acknowledged by ministers inside the closed-door talks.

The Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim, voiced similar concerns.

"We may need a Hong Kong II," he said as the talks moved to Geneva today. "I am not happy. I was disappointed with the meeting yesterday."

Mr Lamy, who was at the talks, warned that failure would cost the world economy hundreds of billions of dollars in lost trade opportunities, and that poorer countries would lose the most.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Lamy warned that time was running out. He said that if a deal were to be achieved in time, all major trading nations and blocs would have to give ground on agricultural subsidies as well as market access for agricultural goods, industrial products and services companies.