BRUSSELS, Oct 24: The European Union must open its farm sector to greater foreign competition as part of world trade talks which are “on a knife edge,” EU trade chief Peter Mandelson warned on Monday.

Amid an ongoing battle with France over his bargaining stance in the talks, Mandelson said the EU will not gain access to other key markets in developing countries if it did not pry open its agriculture sector.

“If we want greater market access in advanced developing countries for our top quality manufactures and services, we have to give increased agricultural market access in return,” he said in a speech for delivery in Leeds, England.

“Agriculture is an inescapable part of this mix, including the reduction in agricultural tariffs. In Europe we cannot deny this reality,” he said in the speech, published in Brussels in advance.

France, irate that the commission has proposed deep cuts in EU farm subsidies, has requested that Mandelson drop talks on agriculture in WTO trade negotiations.

Mandelson and his WTO counterparts are in the midst of an intense phase of negotiations aimed at agreeing on the broad outlines of a trade deal that is supposed to be approved by ministers at a meeting in Hong Kong in December.

WTO officials have warned that the talks are close to breaking point and that the EU has 10 days to either resolve its bitter internal rift or convince partners in the WTO to tame their demands on farm import barriers.

“I do not exaggerate when I say that the Hong Kong ministerial meeting is on a knife edge,” said Mandelson.

“World trade talks, facing a December deadline in Hong Kong, face failure unless all countries involved make an effort,” World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said in a newspaper article on Monday.

In an opinion piece in Britain’s Financial Times daily Wolfowitz pointed to the central role of the issue of agricultural subsidies in the talks.

“Unless serious concessions are made by all sides — developing countries as well as developed countries, Europe, the US, Japan, everyone — the Doha round of trade talks will fail and the people who will suffer the most are the world’s poor,” he said.

“The US needs to do more to cut its subsidies substantially. The EU needs to do more on market access to provide significant new trade opportunities for developing countries.”

“In turn, developing countries need to open their markets in services and manufacturing, and lower their own agricultural protection”.—AFP