Support pledged for new round of global farm talks

Leading industrialised and developing countries have renewed their political commitment to seek by the end of next month a framework for farm trade negotiations that would help revive the Doha trade round.

Their pledges followed weekend meetings in Sao Paulo of the groups of 20 and 77 developing nations and trade and foreign ministers from the US, the European Union (EU) and Australia.

Agreement on a framework for the agricultural negotiations is crucial to hopes of setting parameters for the round, which has stalled since the World Trade Organisation's failed meeting in Cancun, Mexico in September.

It is widely accepted that a deal must be reached by the end of next month, to prevent the trade talks being sidelined indefinitely by November's US presidential election.

"The political direction is there," said Mr Pascal Lamy, EU trade commissioner. "Export subsidies need to be removed gradually, domestic farm aid needs to be reduced substantially, and market access needs to be increased substantially."

"The fact that very distinct countries have noticed there are sufficient convergences to instruct our top officials to continue working urgently is historical compared to previous negotiations," said Mr Celso Amorim, Brazil's foreign minister, who hosted the talks. "It's a message of confidence."

Developing countries had been encouraged by the support from the Group of Seven industrialised countries and Russia, who accepted at their summit last week that developing nations should be allowed to liberalise trade at their own pace.

Negotiators hope that recently renewed political momentum will allow them to make progress on the tough inter-related farm trade issues.

Mr Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, said there was a "chance of doing something extremely historic on export subsidies".