Mediators of the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) farming and industrial goods talks today proposed compromise texts meant to save the Doha free trade accord.
Don Stephenson, Canada's ambassador to the WTO and mediator of the industrial goods talks, said countries needed to "search for balance" between their competing interests in the nearly six-year-old negotiations to secure an agreement.
"Some of those narrow ranges or target numbers or technical draft text will be very painful, for sure. But that pain will be required to get agreement," Crawford Falconer, New Zealand's ambassador to the WTO and chairman of the farming negotiations, said in his paper on possible tariff and subsidy cuts.
Both chairmen pressed countries to cut market protections more than they have offered in recent talks.
Mr Stephenson said developing nations needed to accept deeper manufacturing tariff cuts than many nations have sought, while pressing rich nations to go slightly further than their recent proposals.
Mr Falconer said market-distorting US subsidies to farmers needed to drop by between 66 per cent and 73 percent to between $13 billion and $16.4 billion, and that the highest European Union agricultural tariffs should fall by up to 73 per cent.
Trade diplomats say countries' reactions to the chairs' proposals will determine whether the Doha negotiations have a hope of wrapping up in 2007.
WTO chief Pascal Lamy has pushed for this deadline to avoid a spill-over into US and Indian election campaigns that would further damage the round's chances of success.
Disputes over such measures have dogged the talks since their launch in the Qatari capital in 2001, with the aim of repealing barriers to trade in agriculture, manufacturing and services, and helping poor countries export more.