Europe's trade chief appealed today for urgent progress in long-delayed negotiations for a world trade deal, saying the next key step needs to take place by the end of next week.
Peter Mandelson urged other countries to set aside differences on trade in tropical farm products to allow a new set of compromises on core parts of a World Trade Organisation deal to be proposed in the coming days.
"If people ask me now or later, I say there may not be a later for this deal. It's got to be now," Mr Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner, told reporters.
"And the next step is to see further negotiating texts being tabled in agriculture and industrial goods," he said. "I would like to see texts appearing no later than mid-May, and that means no later than the end of next week."
The WTO's Doha round of negotiations for a global trade deal were launched in 2001 in the hope of helping poor countries to export more and of boosting the global economy.
But the talks have missed several deadlines due to deep differences over how to bring down barriers to trade.
The changeover of administrations in Washington and Brussels in 2009 risk causing several more years of delay without a breakthrough soon, negotiators have said.
The commission disputes claims by Irish farm organisations that it is preparing to cut tariffs on imported beef from outside the EU by 70 per cent, which farmers claim would destroy the sector here.
The commission claims that beef will be treated as a sensitive product under the draft deal being negotiated by the commission, which would mean a tariff reduction of just 23 per cent.