The pact sets a deadline for the global elimination of agricultural export subsidies, realizing a goal that United States negotiators have been pursuing for two decades. The agreement, to be known as the Hong Kong Declaration, also requires industrialized nations to eliminate almost all tariffs and quotas on the exports of the world's poorest nations, a goal of the United Nations for many years.
Other provisions include a broad agreement to ban fishing industry subsidies that lead to overfishing; special help for impoverished cotton-growing countries in Africa; and a plan for the United States, European Union and Japan to provide several billion a year in aid to developing countries to help them compete in global trade.
The Hong Kong Declaration gives a fresh impetus for negotiators to try to finish a comprehensive set of global free trade rules by the end of next year, in time for President Bush to submit it to Congress before his special negotiating authority expires. "I now believe it is possible, which I did not a month ago," said Pascal Lamy, the World Trade Organization's director general.
All of the 149 member nations and customs territories of the World Trade Organization approved the Declaration. The leaders of Cuba's and Venezuela's delegations stood up in the last five minutes of the six-day conference to reserve the right to exempt their countries later from possible new rules concerning service industries like banking, insurance and telecommunications.
But the Hong Kong Declaration does not settle some of the biggest trade issues facing the W.T.O.'s members. Some of these issues were barely discussed here because the sides are so far apart, including lower tariffs on agricultural and manufactured goods and limits on domestic farm subsidies.
As with many trade agreements at the ministerial level, the declaration also papers over differences that could yet prove troublesome later. An agreement reluctantly accepted by the European Union to end agricultural export subsidies by 2013, for instance, calls for a "substantial" part of the subsidies to be eliminated well before then, but does not specify what that means.
Similarly, the ban on fishing subsidies does not define overfishing. And the agreement on cotton leaves for later the tricky question of how quickly the United States should lower its subsidies, which West African nations blame for depressing the prices that their farmers receive for their crops.
Mr. Lamy said that the agreement left negotiators 60 percent of the way to finishing the Doha Development Round of negotiations that began four years ago in Doha, Qatar. The European Union's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, acknowledged that the Hong Kong Declaration was far from comprehensive.
"If we didn't make the conference a success, we certainly saved it from failure," Mr. Mandelson said.
The turning point in the talks came Saturday evening, when Mr. Mandelson and the European Union's agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, introduced a proposal calling for a worldwide ban on agriculture export subsidies by 2013.
Industrial countries agreed in July 2004 that agricultural subsidies should end, but had been unable until today to set a date.
Until Saturday evening, European negotiators had insisted that they would not accept any deadline for an end to subsidies because they wanted a broader definition of export subsidies that would include food aid to poor countries.
Many countries, notably Brazil and the United States, had been discussing a 2010 deadline and had expressed concerns that a ban on food aid might interrupt vital shipments to places like the Darfur region of Sudan.
The final European Union position set a later deadline that was somewhat vague on the extent to which it would include a broader definition of export subsidies. The successful offer came after Europe's leaders agreed Saturday morning in Brussels on a budget extending existing farm subsidies through 2013.
Mr. Mandelson insisted that he and Ms. Fischer Boel had introduced their own proposal Saturday evening and had not simply passed on instructions from Brussels.
