The accord, which restores the World Trade Organization's (WTO) credibility by putting its troubled Doha Round back on track, was hailed as "historic" by exhausted negotiators.

But commentators and analysts said the deal was only a small first step and that many of the toughest decisions on lowering barriers to international commerce were still to be taken.

After five days of wrangling, the WTO's 147 member states gaveled a framework laying down the guidelines for the round, which has been in trouble since the collapse of talks almost a year ago in Cancun, Mexico, when no deal on subsidies was found.

"This is a historic moment for this organization," WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi told a news conference after the adoption of the pact at a late-night session at the WTO's headquarters.

The hard-won deal on a series of contentious trade issues, from farm reform to the launch of negotiations on a new customs code, puts the Doha Round firmly back on track, officials said.

Failure in Geneva could have delayed further trade liberalization for years.

Rich nations welcomed the deal, which would commit them -- once the round is completed -- to rein in the huge subsidies they lavish on farmers and give developed nations better access to their farm markets.

"The Doha Round is back on track. The results are good for the EU and good for developing countries," EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy told reporters. He added that the round might be completed by the end of next year.

The Doha Round was launched in late 2001 and was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2004, but trade officials long ago abandoned that deadline.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said the accord was "crucial step for global trade." "There's a lot of work yet to be done. But today's framework is a milestone," he said.

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

Agreement in the sensitive field of agriculture opened the way to outline accords in industrial goods trade, services and measures to boost the stake of poorer developing countries in world trade -- seen as pivotal issues for the round.

The World Bank says the round could help lift more than half a billion people out of poverty and trigger growth by injecting billions of dollars into the world economy.

African countries, who won some concessions from the United States on cotton, long seen as a prime example of the pain rich nation subsidies can inflict on poor producers, said they could live with the accord.

But the pact was fiercely attack by some activist groups, with the Focus on the Global South calling it a "catastrophe for the poor."

"The outcome of the arm-twisting, opaque and exclusionary process of negotiations, is a framework that protects the interests of the strong," it said in a statement, in a reference to the fact that much of the text had been hammered out in small meetings between major trading powers.

But Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, whose country is a leader of the G20 developing country alliance that played a key part in the Cancun debacle, said it offered a "combination of trade liberalization and social justice."

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

The EU, the United States and countries such as Japan and Switzerland set greater access to markets for industrial goods in developing countries as the price for farm subsidy cuts.

But the wording of the pact on industrial goods was vague.

"Gaining time by procrastination only means you will one day have to pay many times over," the Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial.