United Nations chief Kofi Annan made an impassioned plea on Friday for the poor to get a fairer deal from trade as top officials tried to inject life into stalled talks on freeing up world commerce.

The UN Secretary-General urged business leaders at the World Economic Forum?s annual meeting to use their influence to persuade the United States and the European Union it was in everyone?s interest that they give ground in areas such as farm subsidies.

Negotiations at the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO) have been floundering since a ministerial summit in Mexico collapsed last September, in large part over the differences between rich and poor on reforming world farm trade.

?More than anything else, we need a poor-friendly deal on agriculture. No single issue more gravely imperils the multilateral trading system, from which you benefit so much,? Annan said in a speech at the forum. ?Agricultural subsidies skew market forces. They destroy the environment. And they block poor-country exports from world markets... For all our sakes, and for the credibility of the system itself, they must be eliminated,? he added.

The EU and the United States, which account for much of the some $350 billion a year rich states spend on their farmers, have offered cuts, but they are not deep enough to satisfy developing countries or even other rich but efficient farm goods exporters such as Australia.

Around 20 countries, only some represented by trade ministers, were meeting on the fringes of the annual forum in this Swiss mountain resort to explore ways to narrow the gap. The differences are not just over farming. They extend to who should be obliged to cut tariffs on industrial goods, and by how much, and how to make trade freer in services.

The World Bank says a successful trade round, which the WTO had hoped to conclude by the end of this year, would give a massive boost to a still sluggish world economy. The meeting was called by Swiss Economy Minister Joseph Deiss, whose country is one of the most ardent advocates of continuing protection for farmers in richer states. ?The aim is to look for ways to move the free trade negotiations forward in 2004,? said Swiss government spokesman Manuel Sager.

The United States, the EU, Brazil and India ? four leading powers in trade politics ? will attend the one-day session, but they have not sent trade ministers, which reduces the chances of any breakthroughs, trade sources said. However, the meeting offers a chance for ministers and senior officials ? both the EU and the United States are represented by their Geneva trade envoys ? to debate a recent call from US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick for a redoubling of efforts to secure a deal.

In a letter to all the WTO?s 146 member states, Zoellick said the US was ready partially to break ranks with the EU over farm trade reform and back calls for a complete end to export subsidies, something Brussels has resisted.

Thomas Atkins