New WTO Plans

"The text offers what we see as a realistic zone ... it is certainly something we can live with," EU trade spokesman Peter Power said Wednesday.

The WTO call for cuts in agriculture tariffs and subsidies was a useful step forward, according to power and EU farm affairs spokesman Michael Mann.

"Our first reaction is that the texts provide a basis for further work in the Doha round," the two EU spokesmen added.

Officials from the United States also said progress had been made on revitalizing the faltering Doha round of global trade talks.

A question of when

"I believe the Doha round can be successful, the question is one of time," US Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters at a trade forum in Ghana on Wednesday. "We will know more in the next several weeks or months as to whether it is a near-term focus or whether we will see the Doha round slip for several years and then come back."

But the EU warned that the 27-nation bloc still had "important concerns" over some issues. They refused to give further details, however.

The new WTO proposals call for steep cuts in trade-distorting US farm subsidies by setting a ceiling for such hand-outs at between $13 billion and $16.4 billion, down from the current limit of about $22 billion.

Rich nations off the hook?

This is above the $10-billion to $11-billion ceiling demanded by Brazil and India but below the $17-billion level informally floated by the US, and aid organizations criticized this amount as still being more than developing nations can afford.

"These new numbers would leave rich countries' trade protections largely intact while forcing many developing countries to face severe adjustment costs and failing to create for them new opportunities," British-based aid group Oxfam said in a statement.

The draft industrial goods agreement tabled in Geneva also said developing countries should put a ceiling of 19 percent to 23 percent on their tariffs, well below the 30 percent demanded by Brazil and India.

This is the level, however, that European business groups said is necessary to improve access to emerging markets for their exporters.

Proposals to be studied

The two proposals will be discussed by the WTO's 150 members over the coming weeks. Disputes over farm trade liberalization have soured the Doha talks ever since their launch in the Qatari capital in November 2001.

Diplomats say, however, that negotiators will only convene for serious talks in autumn, giving up earlier plans to try and strike a compromise deal before August.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy has called the new blueprints a fair and reasonable basis for reaching an "ambitious" agreement. He has previously said he hopes for a deal by the end of the year to keep the negotiations from becoming an issue of the US presidential campaign.

"Members will not be fully satisfied with the texts," Lamy said earlier this week in Geneva. "But what separates members today is smaller than what unites them."