World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy on Thursday defended delaying a push for a draft global trade deal until early next year, saying the risk of failure had been too great.
"There is not sufficient level of convergence," he told member states. "If we try this jump and we miss it, we might lose what has already been achieved," he said.
Leading WTO states agreed earlier this week that it would be impossible to reach accord on a treaty blueprint for slashing farm subsidies and lowering tariffs across the global economy at a ministerial conference in Hong Kong in mid-December.
The decision was accepted without dissent at a meeting of ambassadors from the full 148 WTO membership on Wednesday.
But Lamy said that it was important that ministers should next month achieve some progress in the WTO's Doha Round and that a fresh target for a draft be set for early 2006.
"We need something that is identifiable as a step forward," he told a press conference. "We should define what we do after Hong Kong so we achieve full modalities (a blueprint) soon after," he added.
The talks between leading WTO members, including the United States, the European Union, India and Brazil, earlier this week failed to make any headway in agriculture or industrial goods and services, key areas of the round.
The EU is resisting pressure to go further in opening up its heavily protected farm market, while Brazil and India, both influential developing countries, have been reluctant to spell out how far they can go in cutting industrial tariffs.
"Reciprocation by our partners in the areas of industrial tariffs and services is the bargain lying at the heart of this negotiation," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said in a speech in Brussels on Wednesday.
"We cannot make a further agricultural offer before Hong Kong," he added.
The round faces a final deadline of early 2007, because that is when US presidential powers to negotiate trade deals expire. But all the numbers and formulas need to be in place months before then.
The chairmen of the various WTO negotiating bodies, including agriculture, non-agricultural market access (industrial goods) and services must draw up a draft declaration for the ministerial conference over the next two weeks or so.
Lamy acknowledged there were different views within the WTO on what should be on the table for ministers to decide in Hong Kong, notably on whether it was too early to talk numbers.
In his Brussels speech, Mandelson said that most of the main decisions on the figures should be left to the first three months of next year.
But Lamy said that something more was needed. "Gathering ministers in Hong Kong just to look at reports would not enhance the credibility of the process," he said.