A last-minute diplomatic offensive by leading trade powers appeared last night to have beaten back moves by developing countries to adopt a hardline negotiating stance that threatened efforts to revive the Doha world trade round.

Top trade officials from the US, the European Union, Brazil and India urged a meeting of ministers from the Group of 90 developing countries in Mauritius to back the drive to agree by the end of this month a negotiating framework for the round.

Their pleas led G90 ministers to set about re-drafting their planned communique, so as to drop or tone down earlier demands that other World Trade Organisation members had told them were unacceptable. "The talks have produced greater realism about what is at stake," one participant at the meeting said. Mr Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, said the talks had produced some common ground and the G90 had indicated greater flexibility on important issues.

The discussions have reduced the chances of a potentially explosive confrontation over complaints by African cotton-growing countries that they were being seriously harmed by US subsidies.

A senior diplomat from Benin, representing African cotton producers, told Reuters they might be prepared to negotiate on cotton as part of an overall agriculture package, rather than press for separate negotiations - a demand the US opposes.

Trade officials said efforts by US trade representative Mr Robert Zoellick and Mr Lamy to persuade G90 ministers that negotiations on a WTO agreement to facilitate trade would be in poorer countries' interest also appeared to have won support. - (Financial Times Service)