Brown calls on EU to break Doha deadlock

The WTO set an April 30 deadline for an outline deal on liberalisation in two crucial sectors - agriculture and industrial products - at the end of last month's inconclusive meeting of trade ministers in Hong Kong. Pascal Lamy, the WTO's director-general, is urging his 150 member-governments to show more flexibility, but EU trade commissioner Mr Mandelson stressed this week that he would take the EU's offer on cutting farm support off the table unless he was offered more in return on manufactured goods from the leading developing countries - India and Brazil.

Mr Brown said yesterday: "Europe and America will have to make more concessions to get them [the talks] off the ground." He said Brazil and India had shown a willingness to compromise at a meeting of G7 finance ministers held in London shortly before the Hong Kong talks. For the past two months Tony Blair has been exploring the possibility of a summit that would bring together the G8 - the US, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, Italy and Russia - with five leading developing countries - China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil.

Britain believes that the negotiations launched in Doha have become so bogged down in technical detail that it will require leaders to break the logjam. The prime minister is discussing a possible agenda and time for the summit with George Bush, with late March or early April seen as the likeliest date. Mr Lamy has so far been lukewarm about the idea, fearing that a failed summit would spell the end of the negotiations once and for all.

Mr Brown said yesterday that there was not enough time to wait until the regular meeting of the G8, which will be in Moscow this summer. "We can't wait for months for this to happen. If we don't act, people will conclude that we don't have the will to reach a settlement".

With France and Ireland strongly opposed to any further concessions on agriculture from Brussels, Mr Mandelson has very little room for manoeuvre and has been forced to take an aggressive stance in the trade talks.

The chancellor said yesterday that there had to be reform of the common agricultural policy, adding that there was no justification for the present level of subsidy. Europe, he said, had commendably sought to use farm support in the aftermath of the second world war to provide peace through prosperity. "We sought to turn swords into ploughshares, but we created too many ploughshares."