The draft ministerial declaration would now contain five significant objectives and consider whether agricultural produce should be treated as the same as industrial products.

The draft would also include points on further reduction of subsidies and protection, provisions for developing countries, multi-functionality (meaning how to deal with non-trade objectives such as food security and environment) and timetable for negotiations.

Indian officials, who are part of the delegation for the third ministerial conference, said the proposals that combined US and EU proposals significantly retained India's proposal on food security. While the US and Cairns group of nations such as Australia, New Zealand and Latin American countries pushed for drastic cut in agricultural subsidies, India had called for greater flexibility in determining domestic agriculture policy to address concerns of food security and rural employment.

Trade ministers of 135 countries and their delegation settled down to serious business on the second day of the four day conference on Thursday after violent protests by labour and environment activists.

Earlier US had predicted successful round of farm trade talks sayning it was it was confident that a draft document on farm issues to be circulated to trade ministers on Wednesday would set the stage to launch a "successful round" of agricultural trade talks.

Farm trade reform is at the top of the Clinton administration's agenda for the World Trade Organisation negotiations due to unfold over the next three years to promote free trade in a variety of goods and services.

While many farm items remain to be negotiated, key trading partners have endorsed the ability of Singapore trade minister George Yio to produce an eventual consensus document that lays out priorities, said Peter Scher, US special negotiator for agriculture.

The WTO members were due to get copies of the draft document to review on Wednesday, he said.

"When both the Cairns group and the European Union said they had confidence in him, I knew we had the right guy," Scher told reporters and a group of US agricultural industry representatives.

A major issue still to be decided is whether the final farm text will call for negotiations on the elimination of export subsidies or merely further reductions, Scher said. The United States and the Cairns group of 18 farm exporting nations have made a strong push for setting elimination as a goal, but the European Union has resisted that language.

EU considers any plan to end direct aid payments to its domestic farmers "completely unacceptable," Franz Fischler, EU's top farm trade official, told the French newspaper Le Figaro. He contends that the average US farmer received some $11,000 in various forms of government subsidies and assistance, vs $5,400 in Europe.

The outlook in another controversial area `genetically modified crops' is also still unclear.

Currently WTO members are discussing two possible approaches for dealing with biotechnology issues, particularly those surrounding genetically modified crops.

One approach would be for WTO to establish a working group to examine the issue with the goal of helping countries develop timely and predictable approval procedures.

Another option would be to try and incorporate treatment of biotech crops into the existing rules and disciplines of WTO, Scher said. It is also possible that there could be some combination of both approaches but countries remain divided on just what to do, he said. "I don't know whether or not we'll get a consensus on that by the end of the week," Scher said. In another area, the United States is pushing for language that will give negotiators a broad mandate to discuss tariff reductions. Because US tariffs on farm products are much lower than other WTO members, Washington also supports an approach where higher tariffs could be subject to greater cuts than lower ones, he said.