European leaders were yesterday resisting last-minute US efforts to persuade them to join President Clinton at next week's World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle, as WTO envoys finally abandoned attempts to agree a draft agenda for the talks.
The US initiative appears aimed at injecting high-level political impetus into the meeting, amid growing signs that disagreements are threatening plans to launch a new trade round.
Mr Pascal Lamy, EU trade commissioner, said yesterday there was a serious risk that the meeting would be unable to launch a round. However, Mr Mike Moore, WTO director-general, said he was still confident that next week's talks would not fail.
Weeks of negotiations in the WTO have been unable to bridge deep disagreements, particularly over agriculture and developing countries' concerns about their WTO obligations.
Diplomats said the US first suggested about two weeks ago that it might invite other world leaders to the talks. A US official accompanying Mr Clinton on his visit to Kosovo said Washington envisaged asking "some dozens" of leaders to attend.
But although no invitations have so far been issued, initial reactions to informal diplomatic soundings by Washington have been lukewarm. In Paris, a senior French official called the US initiative "pure folly" and said his government and its EU partners were trying to talk Washington out of pushing ahead with it. He said they were reluctant to cancel other engagements "to fly a long way for an unnecessary photo-call".
In Brussels, a spokesman for Mr Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, said the US had recently raised through "diplomatic channels" the possibility of his going to Seattle.
But he said the short notice and a heavy schedule of other commitments made it impossible at present for Mr Prodi to attend. "Seattle is not just around the corner from Brussels," he said.
Another EU official said Brussels was still considering the US proposal. "Our initial view has been fairly sceptical, because we could not see what the meeting would be for," he said.
Mr Gerhard Schroder, the German chancellor, and Mr Keizo Obuchi, the Japanese prime minister, were also said to be unlikely to fly to Seattle, because both had important prior commitments at home.
Diplomats said the US had indicated that it wanted to organise a one-day meeting of between 30 and 40 world leaders next Wednesday. No firm agenda had been proposed, although some US officials had suggested they might discuss ways of helping developing countries.
