Europe's trade chief warned todaythat a push to help the world's poorest countries might fail, leaving a key meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with little to show for a week of hard bargaining.
Although Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson mentioned no names, European diplomats said that both the United States and Japan were reluctant to accept the sweeping duty-free and quota-free access for their goods poor states were seeking.
"I'm worried that the LDC (Least Developed Countries) package could now be in some trouble," Mr Mandelson told a news conference. "If we cannot deliver on this, I really think we should ask what we are doing in Hong Kong," he said.
The WTO's nearly 150 member countries have already abandoned hopes of a draft free trade treaty in Hong Kong as initially planned and many trade diplomats see a package for the poorest as the most achievable goal of the meeting.
Cotton industry chiefs from leading African growers have also warned that their governments will not go along with a deal if it does not address their demands, including a quick end to the subsidies, particularly those of the United States, they say prevent them competing on world markets.
EU resistance to cutting farm goods' duties has been one of the main stumbling blocks to progress in the WTO's Doha round of free trade negotiations, and some see Brussels' emphasis on a pact for the poor as a way to divert attention in Hong Kong.
A key part of the plan is duty-free and quota-free access to the world's biggest economies for exports from its 49 poorest.
But trade officials say the United States has baulked at allowing poor exporters free access to sensitive areas such as textiles, sugar and cotton, and Japan does not want to open up its rice market.
The United States todaysaid it would double its aid-for-trade grants to developing countries to $2.7 billion per year by 2010, and Japan has already promised to provide $10 billion to help poor countries develop their export capacity.
But relief agency Oxfam questioned the sincerity of the offers, saying much of the money was aid that had already been promised and so would be diverted from other programmes.