US President George W. Bush's administration, gunning for re-election November 2, has all but ruled out one-way concessions to get a global free-trade deal.
World Trade Organisation negotiators in Geneva are discussing a proposed compromise, which must be endorsed by July 30, to pave the way to full-blown negotiations on reducing trade barriers.
A draft of the interim deal, which must be sealed by a meeting of the WTO's General Council starting July 27, notably advocates discussions to eliminate agricultural export subsidies.
Washington appears to be delivering a message that it will move but only in tandem with its partners, some of whom appear reluctant.
"While we have some important and difficult issues to resolve with the text that is currently being debated, we are prepared to work with others using the text as a basis for making progress if others are prepared to work on that same basis and without preconditions," US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick's spokesman, Richard Mills, said Thursday.
A broad agenda for negotiations was first agreed in the Qatari capital Doha in November 2001 but talks have been deadlocked since ministers from rich and poor countries clashed in Cancun, Mexico last year.
French President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday the latest proposal on agricultural trade was "unacceptable." Mills said he had no comment on Chirac's statement.
"We have been emphasising that the Doha development agenda provides a strategic economic opportunity to advance global growth," Mills said.
"In particular, the negotiations offer an opportunity to achieve an historic reform in global agriculture by driving agriculture liberalisation," he said.
"We have offered substantial cuts in farm subsidies but only if other countries also cut subsidies and open markets. We believe that Doha must result in substantial new openings for trade in agriculture and services."
Special interests in the United States already are rising up against the pact, underscoring the political risks for the Bush administration in the negotiations.
Cotton subsidies for US growers are under pressure at the negotiations because of stiff opposition from African cotton exporters, who complain they are being priced out of the international markets.
"From a cotton perspective, the draft (WTO proposal) is unacceptable," said National Cotton Council chairman Woody Anderson.
"In many ways, the Doha Round is moving backwards for US agriculture," he said in a statement.
"The document unfairly and unnecessarily singles out the cotton program and opens up US cotton to unequal treatment and unreasonable expectations. There are no less than four specific references to cotton and at least two other indirect references."
No other agricultural commodity was singled out in the document, Anderson complained.
"It is stunning to us that the General Council of the WTO would issue such a draft and would continue to provide credence to the attempt to single out one US agricultural commodity program for destruction."
In addition, a bipartisan group of 15 senators sent a letter to Zoellick opposing a WTO proposal to ensure food aid is not used to dispose of surpluses or displace commercial food suppliers.
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