The United States offered to cut official aid to its farmers to 15 billion dollars a year in a bid to spur movement at the WTO talks but found no support from key player Brazil.

‘’Nice try,’’ said a member of the Brazilian delegation, adding that the proposed new subsidy level was ‘’still too high.’’ Brazil has been acting here as an unofficial spokesman for developing countries.

Brazil’s chief WTO negotiator Celso Amorim subsequently struck a slightly more positive note, saying the US move ‘’proves the engagement of US in the negotiations but with a low level of ambition.’’

‘’I think it was a start but just a slow start,’’ he told journalists after talks that went on late into the evening.

US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that the US had placed ‘’an important new offer on the table, (and) we are looking forward to our trading partners doing the same.’’

The European Union’s top trade official also said the talks needed to step up their pace if a deal is to be reached before the week is out.

Tuesday’s session ‘’had its high points and its low points but overall I think we are still moving forward -- but we need to move forward a little quicker,’’ EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson said.

Mandelson said that whilst the agriculture question was by no means wholly resolved, ‘’it’s very clear now that that side of the negotiations, if not closed, is getting behind us and now we have got to concentrate on industrial goods trade’’.

This is a field where ‘’there’s a lot of disagreement, a lot of heat but where we have to find an outcome in order to get a deal,’’ he added.

Industrial goods -- known as non-agricultural market access (NAMA) in WTO jargon -- is a key point of the Doha round for developed countries who are calling for much greater access to emerging markets.

The WTO’s chief negotiator on the topic, Canadian ambassador Don Stephenson, has proposed that some 30 developing countries reduce industrial tariffs on the basis of a coefficient formula between 19 and 26 (the lower the coefficient, the greater the cut).

Mandelson said that there was still some reticence among some WTO members to accept this basis even at this late stage.

‘’But I think we got beyond that point by the end of the evening,’’ he said.

Despite the EU’s attempt to shift the focus onto industrial goods, developing countries remained far from impressed by the agricultural offers placed on the table so far by Brussels and Washington.

One member of Brazil’s negotiating team stressed that the US only doled out eight billion dollars in agricultural subsidies last year due to soaring commodity prices -- and that thus the offer to ‘’cut’’ subsidies to 15 billion dollars could in effect enable Washington to double the amount of money it hands out to its farmers.

Non-governmental organisations were also scathing in their reactions, with the Geneva-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) branding it ‘’absurd’’ and Oxfam International saying it was ‘’vastly inadequate.’’

‘’Fifteen billion (dollars) is around twice what the US is (really) spending at the moment. They would not have to cut a penny off current subsidies as a result of this offer,’’ said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International.

Negotiations were further hampered by the absence of Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath. A key player, he was in New Delhi for a crucial government no-confidence vote sparked by left-wing opposition to a nuclear energy deal with the United States.

The Indian government narrowly won the vote and Indian Commerce Secretary Gopal Pillai told AFP that Nath was due in Geneva early Wednesday.