SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - Trade leaders from around the world ended a two-day meeting Sunday with doubts about the chances for a new trade treaty by the end of next year.
The gathering of 29 members of the World Trade Organization failed to find common ground on reducing subsidies to increase international competition in agriculture, an issue that ministers said would likely block progress in other areas.
"We are ready to get down to work if Europe frees the way for us to move," said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.
European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said Europe is "working hard to get a package of reform" that it hopes can satisfy negotiators from other nations.
Ministers from union countries will meet next week to try to reach an agreement on cutting farm subsidies amid resistance from France and others who fear the effects of cuts on small farmers and rural communities.
This weekend's meeting in Egypt was one in a series leading to a gathering of the WTO's 146 members scheduled for September in Cancun, Mexico.
The talks are part of a process of negotiations that ministers hope to end next year with agreements to reduce import tariffs and other trade barriers among member nations — with the goal of boosting the global economy.
Until now, ministers have insisted they can reach an agreement by the end of next year, but Lamy said Sunday that may not be possible.
"We will decide in Cancun whether or not we can reconfirm this deadline, and we can only do that if there is enough progress," he said.
Areas where more work is needed include agriculture, tariffs on manufactured goods and the regulation of competition and foreign investment, Lamy said.
In areas other than agriculture, ministers at the Egypt meeting said they are making progress.
After a concession from the United States, negotiators made gains on an agreement that would allow poor nations to import cheaper, generic copies of drugs to treat AIDS, malaria and other illnesses.
A senior U.S. trade official said the Bush administration will no longer insist the agreement apply to a specific list of diseases.
WTO rules allow countries facing a crisis in public health to override patents and order drugs from cheaper, generic suppliers. But they can only order from domestic manufacturers, which is of no use for the majority of poor nations that have no pharmaceuticals industry.
An agreement that would have allowed imports of generic drugs in certain circumstances collapsed late last year when the United States, under pressure from major drug companies, refused to accept it, despite agreement by all other WTO members.
Zoellick said he is talking regularly with drug companies and hopes to forge an agreement by the Cancun meeting.
The pharmaceutical industry fears large developing nations such as India and Brazil would try to take advantage of an agreement to benefit domestic manufacturers of generic medicines, who could produce cheap drugs that could be smuggled into industrialized countries.
The ministers plan to meet again at the end of July in Montreal, Canada, to try to narrow differences further before the Cancun session.
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