Blair called on trade ministers to break the "logjam" threatening a key upcoming World Trade Organization meeting in December by taking "ambitious" steps to cut agricultural subsidies and tariffs.

In return, developing countries must open their markets to foreign investment, he said.

The prime minister called for "a comprehensive, ambitious agreement to cut barriers to trade in the three key areas: Agriculture, non-agricultural market access, and services."

In a major speech on foreign policy at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in London Monday night, Blair warned there would be "no security or prosperity at home" unless poverty overseas was addressed. Reducing poverty was part of the fight against terrorism, he added.

"In a modern world there is no security or prosperity at home unless we deal with the global challenges of conflict, terrorism, trade, climate change and poverty," Blair said.

He called on major trading blocks, including the United States and the European Union, to stop protecting their own interests and lower trade barriers that prevent developing countries from accessing their markets.

"Self-interest and mutual interest are inextricably linked. National interests can best be advanced through collective action," said Blair. "Calculate not just the human misery of the poor themselves. Calculate our loss: The aid, the lost opportunity to trade, the short-term consequences of the multiple conflicts; the long-term consequences on the attitude to the wealthy world of injustice and abject deprivation amongst the poor."

"We will reap what we sow; live with what we do not act to change."

At the Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, earlier this year, world leaders stated their commitment to reaching a deal on free trade by the beginning of 2006.

However fears are mounting that such an agreement may founder on seemingly insurmountable differences between some WTO members.

Talks between WTO officials last week ended in a stalemate after developing nations dismissed offers from the United States and EU on reducing trade barriers as insufficient.

Some agriculture-producing countries have been resistant to making major cuts in subsidies, arguing it will have an adverse affect on domestic economies.

Last month French President Jacques Chirac threatened to veto any WTO deal that called EU farm subsidies into question.

However emerging markets like Brazil have resisted broadening discussions to goods and services, until the subsidy issue has been satisfactorily addressed.

Following last week's talks in London and Geneva, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the discussions had succeeded "not in narrowing differences but in defining them."

"The gap is significant," he said.

But Blair is determined to broker a deal, which he made a key aim of Britain's G8 presidency this year. A global free-trade agreement would boost world trade by up to $600 billion and lift millions of people out of poverty, he argues.

During Monday's address, he announced Britain would treble spending on trade aid in the coming five years, and urged the United States and European Union to match the amount.

Measures to help the poorest nation should include doubling investment in infrastructure and eliminating all export subsidies, he said. Rules applied to exports from the poorest developing countries should also be simplified.

But Conservative Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary David Willets accused Blair of giving "lofty speeches" while missing the opportunity to make real progress on subsidy reduction.

"It's the implementation, it's the follow-up, it's the gritty practicality that's missing with him, and sadly we're seeing this weakness as we go into the Hong Kong trade negotiations in the next few weeks," he told BBC Radio.

Willets said Europe's name was "morally damaged" by the effect of its agricultural subsidies on the poorest countries and he believed there was a "powerful moral case" for free trade.

He argued that while Britain held the EU presidency, Blair should "play his hand much more strongly" so that the EU offered substantial subsidy reductions in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, anti-poverty campaigners accused Blair of reneging on his earlier promises that developing nations would not be forced to liberalize their economies in exchange for greater access to first world markets.

John Hilary, campaigns and policy director at War on Want, accused Blair of wrecking any chance of a pro-poor outcome at the WTO talks.

Earlier in the year, Blair had pledged not to force poor countries to liberalize, he noted, after the Commission for Africa concluded that forced trade liberalization was the wrong approach to reducing poverty.

However the British government was now making no secret of its efforts to force developing countries to open their industrial and services markets for the benefit of first world business, he said.

"Tony Blair has made much political capital out of the drive to make poverty history in 2005. Yet the Labor government has gone back on its manifesto pledge on international trade.

"U.K. trade policy threatens to make poverty permanent. Even at this eleventh hour Blair must drop his aggressive free trade agenda, and put the needs of the world's poor first."

He continued: "There is nothing on the table at Hong Kong for developing countries -- the deal offers no hope for the poor. Blair and his EU allies have ensured that the ministerial will be a disaster."

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