Davos, January 28:

The UK’S finance minister Gordon Brown yesterday called on EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson to offer fresh concessions to break the logjam in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks as Britain’s growing impatience with Europe’s hard-line approach surfaced hours before 25 ministers were due to meet in Davos.

With little expected from the talks at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss Alps, Brown said it was up to Brussels and Washington to move the negotiations forward and said an emergency summit involving leaders from the developed and developing world would be needed.

The WTO set an April 30 deadline for an outline deal on liberalisation in two crucial sectors — agriculture and industrial products — at the end of last month’s inconclusive meeting of trade ministers in Hong Kong.

Pascal Lamy, the WTO’s director-general, is urging his 150 member-governments to show more flexibility, but EU trade commissioner Mandelson stressed this week that he would take the EU’s offer on cutting farm support off the table unless he was offered more in return on manufactured goods from the leading developing countries — India and Brazil.

Brown said yesterday, “Europe and America will have to make more concessions to get them the talks off the ground.”

He said Brazil and India had shown a willingness to compromise at a meeting of G7 finance ministers held in London shortly before the Hong Kong talks. For the past two months Tony Blair has been exploring the possibility of a summit that would bring together the G8, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil.

‘Eradicate poverty’

DAVOS: Leading world figures at the WEF here have stressed that the world should follow through on the ‘mountain of goodwill’ generated last year towards the goal of eradicating poverty in Africa. The panellists in the Afri-can development debate said the top priorities for pragmatic action were: exposing co-rruption, investing he-avily in primary education, and taking aim at the ‘sacred cows’ of European, Japanese and American farm subsidies. — Xinhua