World trade talks near showdown

France is trying to tie Peter Mandelson's hands

Long-stalled world trade talks are heading for a crunch week, with the US and Europe still far apart on crucial issues such as farming tariffs.

Without rapid progress, a meeting of all 148 members December in Hong Kong could prove abortive, negotiators say.

The European Union is widely blamed - not least because France wants to stop EU trade chief Peter Mandelson from offering any more concessions.

European officials will now meet to see what cuts they can still offer.

"We're number-crunching to see what we can do within our mandate," said EU agriculture spokesman Michael Mann.

"The process is on life support," said New Zealand's Crawford Falconer, who is leading the negotiations on agriculture.

"It's probably another 10 days before the doctor decides to switch it off or not."

Public disagreements

In recent days, the arguments in Brussels have become public and heated.

France - traditionally one of the biggest defenders of Europe's system of agricultural price supports, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - has made no secret of its disdain for Mr Mandelson's performance.

The US and other big farming countries such as Brazil and Australia are pushing hard for movement from Europe.

But Paris now says that even though it failed to get the other 24 EU states to agree, it will still refuse to back any watering-down of the current EU stance, following a 2003 EU agreement to roll back some CAP subsidies over the following decade.

World trade talks have repeatedly missed deadlines

"We will not accept WTO talks that go back on [2003's] unanimous decision of Europe," Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told France's Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

Currently the EU is offering to cut tariffs by about a third.

But the G20 group of developing countries - a bloc with growing power in a WTO usually dominated by the richest countries - wants an average of 54%, with the US demanding 75%.

Critics of the US position point out that it uses export subsidies instead of tariffs to bolster its farmers, and is offering substantially less movement there than it is asking for in tariffs from others.

For Europe, Mr Mandelson said that US and other demands were "hopelessly over-inflated".

And developing countries say both the US and EU - as well as Japan - continue to offer less in tariff and subsidy cuts than they demand in terms of opening up of vulnerable markets in services, for instance, to powerful western firms.

The current round of talks began in 2001 and was dubbed a "development round", to make up for previous deals which were seen as unfair to developing countries.

The original deadline for completion was 2004, but the farm subsidies and tariffs argument has repeatedly slowed down progress.