European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Sunday there would be no new world trade agreement at a summit in Hong Kong next month unless the United States and Brazil compromised, Reuters reported. "If the others do not move ... there will be no agreement," Barroso told France's Europe 1 radio in an interview. He said he was "pessimistic" about the chances of reaching agreement at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit. "If the others do not move, it will be a failure. They must consider this offer (by the European Union) as a very big step," Barroso said, adding that the EU could not be blamed if the summit ended in failure. Trade negotiators from around the world said last week their differences were still too deep to settle on a blueprint for a new WTO round at the Hong Kong summit. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim held talks in Rome on Saturday which they said were useful but did not achieve a breakthrough. The Hong Kong meeting between Dec. 13 and 18 was previously billed as a deadline for reaching the outline plan, four years after the round was launched to boost the global economy and help farmers in some of the world's poorest countries. --More 2240 Local Time 1940 GMT
