Trade ministers promise Doha push

EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson warned the trade round could fail if a deal was not struck this year. The talks are stuck over high farm subsidies in Western countries, and the refusal of developing nations to open up to services and manufactured goods.

The trade ministers were meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. Mandelson said any incoming US president would "find it difficult to put trade on top of their to-do list". He said a failure to agree a free trade deal this year would put the text that had been agreed so far "in deep freeze... and it will have turned to mash by 2010" when talks could continue.His Brazilian colleague Celso Amorim said if last year had been a "window of opportunity" to reach a trade deal, then 2008 would be the "window of necessity".