The European Union trade representative, Peter Mandelson, said afterward on Wednesday that developing countries, including Brazil, had undermined efforts in two days of talks at the World Trade Organization to lay the groundwork for a blueprint agreement before a mid-December ministerial conference in Hong Kong.

"I want proper negotiation to start - that's all I'm asking for," he said, adding that a refusal by developing countries to put forward proposals on accepting more goods and services from the rich world "does not add up to deal making."

Minutes later, Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, accused Mandelson of being disingenuous, saying that developing countries had offered concrete proposals.

Amorim warned Mandelson to come up with far deeper cuts in EU agricultural subsidies or take most of the blame for the failure of the trade round that began in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. If the current EU offer was "not improved upon," Amorim said, "then it's not two months, three months, one year or two years" that it will take to negotiate a new treaty.

"Then we just can't move," Amorim said, apparently warning that the Doha round of talks could grind to a halt.

Mandelson also warned that lack of progress in Geneva could endanger the four-year-old talks. "Before you know where you are, you're traveling through 2006 at risk of losing more time building up until it becomes too late to recover," he said.

With tensions running high, the concern for negotiators leaving Geneva was the risk of flying blind as they looked ahead to the Hong Kong conference.

Negotiators from the United States, the EU, Brazil and India all have scaled back expectations for reaching a blueprint for a deal at that meeting, emphasizing instead the need for forward momentum to reach a deal before 2007, when the authority of the U.S. government to negotiate a new accord expires.

But without a completed blueprint for the Hong Kong meeting, developing countries are likely to continue attacking rich trading blocs, in particular the European Union, for selfishness and protectionism during a trade round that had been expected to increase prosperity for the poorest countries.

Seeking to head off that prospect, Mandelson on Wednesday put forward a proposal for a package of measures to help the developing world. He called for a "clear, itemized development package to be agreed upon in Hong Kong" that would represent "an early harvest regardless of progress in the other areas."

Fresh in the minds of many trade negotiators is the last ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization, held in Cancún, Mexico, two years ago. That meeting collapsed amid deep disagreement between poorer and richer nations over agricultural subsidies.

Taking another shot at Mandelson, Amorim said agreement in Hong Kong on a development package would be "good," but he also warned, "We could not qualify that meeting as a success on that basis alone."