The World Trade Organisation's Doha Round negotiations on cutting barriers to global commerce appeared in serious trouble on Saturday as talks on the key farm and goods tariff dossiers were reported in blockage.
Only hours after a gloomy account emerged of industrial goods discussions over the past week, the chairman of the effort to shape a farm trade pact said there were still big gaps between countries with little movement on central issues.
"Too many variables with positions too wide apart" for any compromise to be in sight, and "scarcely anywhere in negotiating terms" were how the chairman, New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, summed up aspects of the talks.
On Friday, the ambassador steering the goods talks - Canada's envoy Don Stephenson - voiced similar frustration, as trade sources said days of discussion had shown no sign of closing the huge gap between developed and developing countries.
Stephenson, according to the sources, told negotiators he no longer wanted to hear them simply repeating their positions when a new session on goods tariffs starts on June 4.
"I already know them (the positions). They haunt me," he declared. Both chairmen are due to present in July a formal draft text for a final agreement in the two cornerstone areas, to provide a basis for an effort, which will go up to ministerial level, to try to rescue the overall round.
"Things are looking rather gloomy all over at this stage," said one source close to the negotiations, launched in Doha, Qatar, at the end of 2001 and originally set to wrap up by the end of 2005.
The aim of the round is to inject new vigour into the global economy by lowering barriers to commerce in goods and services and enabling poorer countries to trade their way out of poverty and under-development.
Farm talks are due to resume next Wednesday, and Falconer's comments - issued by the WTO on Saturday - came in a 15-page paper setting out "challenges" on where positions might converge and how this might be achieved. An earlier paper tabled at the start of May by the New Zealand envoy was fiercely criticised by both rich and poorer nations in the 150-member WTO.
Earlier in the week China declared that the richer powers - a clear reference to the United States and the European Union - must offer "effective cuts" in agricultural subsidies, the central issue bedevilling the farm talks.
But on Friday, France's new farm minister, Christine Lagarde, said she would not compromise the interests of her country's farmers to secure a global trade deal. It was up to other countries to make "serious proposals," she added.
And in a warning to the United States, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said in Lisbon on Thursday that he would have no alternative to review the offer Brussels has put on the table "if others cannot make a commensurate effort."
India, which with Brazil leads the G21 group of poorer nations in the negotiations, says that it will continue to work to balance interests in the Round. But it argues that there is still no sign of "political will" among rich powers.