With two days left to go before the scheduled end of the gathering, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson repeated he would not accept demands from the US and developing countries to make deeper cuts in agriculture subsidies and tariffs.

Mandelson said if the EU's trade partners did not show flexibility, then the Hong Kong meeting, tasked with preparing the ground for a global trade liberalisation deal, could be headed towards failure.

"The emerging direction of the meeting is worrying. In the main trade boosting areas of the discussions, the level of ambition if anything is going backwards," Mandelson said.

"I do not want to contemplate a failure at Hong Kong ... but equally I see no point in an outcome here that simply locks in low ambitions, diminishes benefits for developing countries and falls short of our responsibilities to the global economy," he said.

"I would find it difficult to sign up to such a rolling-back of ambitions."

US trade officials in turn repeated their charge that it was the EU that had to move at the talks.

"The whole round is being held hostage by the failure ... of our major interlocutor to come up with ambitious offers on agriculture," a US official told reporters, without directly naming the EU.

Speaking separately, Faryar Shirzad, US Deputy National Security Advisor responsible for trade affairs, said: "We're not pleased with the progress of the negotiations."

"Our ambitions for Hong Kong were much higher than what we think is now possible," Shirzad said, adding that much needed to be done to get a deal by next year when the negotiations have to be completed.

The EU and US exchanges came amid growing frustration at the lack of headway in the Doha Round of talks, launched in Qatar in 2001 with the aim of freeing up global trade and helping developing countries.

Joining the fray, Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile said Europe was at the heart of the problem because it was adopting diversionary tactics to shift attention from the core issue of reducing agricultural trade barriers.

"There is going to be a serious need for countries to focus their energies in the coming couple of days on the critical issues," Vaile told reporters.

Attacking both protagonists, a major coalition of developing countries warned it would reject any deal that harmed their interests, a move that would condemn the Hong Kong meeting since all decisions are taken by consensus.

"It appears that these talks will bring us nothing at all and even drive us further into poverty," Arvin Boolel, Mauritius Minister of Agriculture and chairman of the 56-member Africa, Caribbean and Pacific group.

"This situation makes a mockery of the development agenda of this round. We will not accept any agreement in Hong Kong that is made at our expense," Boolel said.

The G20 and the Cairns group of agricultural exporters, which Australia leads, pressed the same point, urging the EU and the United States to budge.