Global talks to reshape the world's farming industry are posing a key test for the WTO with negotiators set to meet tomorrow to try to salvage an end-March deadline.
For months negotiations have been deadlocked amid bitter recriminations, and hopes for an accord by March 31 have been fading fast since the last meeting here failed to reap any signs of compromise.
"I think it makes it a tall order," said one trade source, of the task to finalise on time the targets and guidelines for negotiating further liberalization of world agriculture.
Traditionally the most controversial subject tackled by WTO negotiators, agriculture also stirs up plenty of emotions and protests from farmers around the world. Thousands are due to protest here on March 29.
But a lone South Korean farmer has perhaps attracted more attention. For the past four weeks, the 56-year-old has been camped in an igloo tent on the pavement outside the WTO's lakeside headquarters.
Wearing a "WTO Kills Farmers" placard across his chest in front of passing drivers at one of the busiest roads into the city, he arrived in Geneva with a three-month visa to stage his one-man protest.
The revolt continues inside the global trade body, with many countries at odds with each other.
Positions are so entrenched that Stuart Harbinson, the chairman of the talks, whose task is to find a middle ground between members' proposals, has barely managed to alter a draft blueprint in recent weeks.
Circulated to the 145 WTO members in February, the document drawn up by the respected former Hong Kong ambassador was promptly criticised from all sides for being too ambitious, or not going far enough.
Now Harbinson has released what he calls a "limited revision" of the first draft ahead of the final scheduled session beginning this week to establish the so-called modalities for the talks.
And while acknowledging that a number of useful suggestions have emerged, he notes in his latest text that "positions in key areas remained far apart".
"There was insufficient collective guidance to enable the chairman, at this juncture and in those areas, significantly to modify the first draft," he says.
When they launched the three-year Doha round of trade talks, trade ministers gave their diplomats until March 31, 2003 to agree the modalities for the agriculture negotiations.
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