World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy presented his blueprint on Saturday for a crucial trade summit next month, saying he hoped it would speed the search for a global free trade deal.
The meeting of WTO ministers in Hong Kong no longer aims to agree a draft treaty on reforming world trade but it still needs to clear the way for such a pact to be struck in early 2006.
"I hope that this will convince them that it is worth taking further steps," Lamy told journalists after presenting his 8-page draft ministerial declaration to WTO envoys.
As expected, the text set out few goals for the ministerial meeting other than calling for new dates by which a draft treaty, spelling out all the major moves to open up markets in farm and industrial goods and services, would be agreed.
Lamy added that he hoped that WTO states would be able to make the draft more specific, notably in the areas of farm and industrial goods, before it is sent for final approval by the WTO's executive General Council next December 1-2.
"I think that we all agree that we need to work hard to improve the text...before Hong Kong," he said in his address to envoys.
Members of the G90 group of developing countries, which represents the poorer members of the WTO, meet next Tuesday and Wednesday to agree a common stance ahead of Hong Kong.
The so-called Group of Four - the United States, the European Union, Brazil and India - are also due to meet at the end of next week in Geneva to seek to narrow their differences.
The latter group, which represents a wide range of trading interests, has been spearheading the search for compromises, particularly in farm trade, where many blame the EU's reluctance to offer further tariff cuts for the impasse.
The five-day ministerial conference in mid-December was supposed to mark the effective end of four years of hard bargaining on a deal supporters say would inject billions of dollars into the world economy and lift millions out of poverty.
Without an advance in Hong Kong, the round has little chance of meeting a final deadline of end-2006/early 2007 because wrapping up talks takes months of work even after a blueprint, with all its politically difficult bargains, has been agreed.
Despite the lowering of the bar for the Hong Kong conference, Lamy said talks in recent months had brought significant progress in areas such as cutting red tape and agreeing tighter rules on actions such as anti-dumping.
In the latest sign of tension, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Saturday the draft declaration would not advance the trade talks, even though there was progress in agriculture.
"However, this progress is not matched in industrial goods or services. This lack of balance is a real problem and points to the ground we need to make up at Hong Kong," Mandelson said in a statement.