Singapore and the United States floated the idea of a special late-summer meeting of ministers to put derailed world trade talks back on track.
The aim would be to make up ground lost due to last September's failure of a World Trade Organisation conference in Cancun, Mexico, where rich and poor states failed to bridge deep differences. The biggest rift was over developing country demands that industrial countries slash the $1 billion a day they provide in support to their farmers.
"Perhaps we should think of a special session in Geneva at the end of summer to which maybe ministers can be invited and to see whether we can not in fact achieve what we tried to achieve in Cancun," Singapore's trade minister, George Yeo, said. Geneva is the headquarters of the 146-member WTO.
At stake is a deal to tear down barriers to commerce that the World Bank estimates could add over $500 billion a year to global incomes by 2015, lifting 144 million people out of poverty.
Mr Yeo was speaking at a news conference with US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who was on the third leg of a nine-country tour to take stock of prospects for the trade talks.
Mr Zoellick sought to breathe life into the negotiations last month by sending a letter to WTO members in which he set out ideas to try to ensure that 2004 was not a "lost year" for trade.
One of his proposals was to catch up by the northern summer on detailed work that should have been done in Cancun, thus forming a platform for a ministerial meeting by the end of the year.
Without abandoning that idea, Zoellick said he would consult other ministers on Yeo's suggestion. "We're open with anything that works," he said.
Still, the obstacles in the way of substantive progress remain daunting. As part of any deal, Zoellick said, the European Union would have to agree eventually to scrap its farm export subsidies, a step the 15-nation bloc has strongly resisted.
African countries would also have to drop their opposition to new rules aimed at facilitating trade by cutting red tape and weeding out corruption.