GENEVA, Aug 1: Rich and poor nations struck a deal on Sunday to slash billions of dollars in farm subsidies, create more open industrial markets and put troubled global commerce negotiations back on track.

After five days of wrangling, the World Trade Organization's 147 member states formally agreed on a framework laying down guidelines for the organization's Doha Round, which has been in trouble since the acrimonious collapse of a ministerial conference last September in Cancun, Mexico.

"Better late than never," WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told reporters after the adoption of the agreement at a late-night session of top-level trade diplomats at the WTO's headquarters.

"This is a historic moment for this organization," WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi told a news conference. The hard-won deal on a series of contentious trade issues, ranging from farm reform to the launch of negotiations on a new customs code, puts the stalled Doha Round firmly back on track, officials and negotiators said.

"This is the beginning of the end for (farm) subsidies. Export subsidies will be eliminated first," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said. Brazil, together with India, leads the G-20 developing nation alliance that played a key role in the failure of last year's talks in Cancun, where it mounted fierce attacks on the farm subsidies of rich powers, such as the United States and the European Union. The G-20 says they deny it world markets.

After an all-night negotiating marathon, key WTO members, including the United States, the European Union and Brazil and Japan, on Saturday had agreed to the elimination of export subsidies at a date yet to be set, a key developing country demand, to limit other subsidies and lower tariff barriers.

Agreement on the sensitive issue of agriculture opened the way for a similar understanding in industrial goods trade and development issues, areas in which the WTO was seeking a framework accord to serve as a basis for future more detailed negotiations as part of the Doha Round.

The World Bank says the round, whose conclusion could still be years away, could help lift more than half a billion people out of poverty through increased trade and boost global growth.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler, who has been fiercely criticized by France, the biggest beneficiary of EU farm subsidies, for giving away too much, said the EU could "broadly accept" the farm deal.

A delegate from Mauritius, which has taken a leading part in the WTO talks on behalf of African nations, said that the so-called Group of 90 developing countries could also live with the text even if it did not get everything it wanted.

Failure in Geneva would have risked delaying further trade liberalization for years. The EU, the United States and countries such as Japan and Switzerland have said they will not slash the generous subsidies they lavish on their farmers unless they get a greater access to markets for industrial goods in developing countries.

But the agreement makes clear that the poorest countries will not be forced to contribute to market opening in any area, including services. -Reuters