GENEVA, Feb 11: A dispute among developing countries over preferential trade access to rich economies erupted during talks at the World Trade Organization on liberalising agriculture, a trade source said on Friday.

"There were strongly-worded exchanges between some developing countries being given preferences and some of those that are excluded," an official said after meetings of farm trade negotiators this week at WTO headquarters in Geneva.

African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, mainly former colonies, notably benefit from low tariff preferential trading terms with the European Union on a range of goods including bananas.

Stuttering talks among the 148 WTO-member states on extending liberalization, which were launched in Doha, Qatar in 2001, are meant to include an overall reduction in trade barriers by rich countries.

But some ACP nations fear they might face harsher trading conditions if they lose their preferences. Jamaica intervened on behalf of Caribbean countries to call for some preferences to be maintained and for flexibility to allow "small vulnerable economies" to adapt, the source said.

But several Latin American countries insisted that preferences undermine a key WTO principle of non-discrimination and said they should not "hold up liberalisation," the source added.

Brazil and the United States, backed by some other developing countries said the erosion of preferences was inevitable but argued for a transitional mechanism that would help vulnerable countries adjust. -AFP