The ministerial conference in Hong Kong enabled the WTO to make a modest advance toward freer global trade but steered clear of the pesky details that could cause fresh headaches for negotiators in the months ahead.
The six-day meeting here of ministers from the 149 WTO member states closed with a 19-page statement that managed to bridge some of the gaps separating the EU and the US on the one hand, and the developed and developing world on the other.
With the document in hand negotiators will now attempt to find consensus on the details that lurk beneath the general statements of commitment and concession.
The goal is to secure a sweeping multilateral accord that removes global trade barriers by the end of next year, as called for in the Doha Round, launched in 2001.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy hailed the fresh "sense of urgency" and momentum he said the Hong Kong gathering had injected into the Doha process.
But he also offered a more realistic assessment of what actually happened here, saying: "We came here with 55 percent of the round. We're leaving with 60 percent. There remains quite a lot to do."
The offers put on the negotiating table "need quite a lot of improvement," he added.
WTO member governments will have to spell out exactly how they plan to cut farm export subsidies by 2013, a date they committed themselves to respecting in the ministerial text.
In addition, the EU, which reluctantly proposed the date, insisted that it be accompanied by close WTO scrutiny of US international food aid programs that the EU says amount to a disguised subsidy for US farmers.
US officials at the meeting here did little to conceal their intense annoyance at the EU argument that its food aid scheme distorts free trade. Reviving that debate in the new year could re-ignite the ill will between Washington and Brussels that was apparent in Hong Kong.
Other WTO members will be under pressure to put forward proposals on opening their services sector "as soon as possible" to foreign competition.
Developing countries are decidedly leery of demands by the industrialized world for such a move and are likely to make strong counter-demands for lower import tariffs in developed markets.
South African Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said during the meeting that developing countries were "not seeing a balance in what we are expected to do in relation to what developed countries are expected to do."
Shortly after the close of the talks, Mauritian Trade Minister Madun Dulloo said that developing countries "had no choice" but to agree to concessions in order to avoid blame for prompting the collapse of the conference, which at various points this week appeared distinctly possible.
"Unfortunately, when we thought the conference was going to be a failure, the developing countries, including the least developed countries, had no choice but to make a lot of concessions in order to make at least some progress," he said.
"There was a sort of blame game going on. If we had maintained our position for the various matters that were essential for us, then we would have been blamed for being responsible for the failure of yet another conference," he said.
If that attitude lingers into the new year, chances of finding the common ground among rich and poor countries necessary for an overall accord by next December could be severely compromised.
Another potentially explosive issue left unresolved here is the plight of African cotton producers, who once again failed to convince the US to abolish the generous domestic support subsidies it lavishes on its own cotton farmers.
Such assistance is seen as depressing world prices to the great detriment of African growers and threatens to embarrass the WTO, which has said the Doha Round is aimed at raising living standards in developing countries.
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