GENEVA, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Ministers from three dozen major players in the World Trade Organization (WTO) got down to sticking details Tuesday in a crucial week-long effort to salvage the Doha Round of global trade talks.

    Speaking to the delegations at the start, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said he intended for consultations in the second day to move into detailed work on both agriculture and non-agricultural market access and to begin discussing possible solutions to the outstanding issues.

    The Doha Round of global trade talks, officially launched in 2001, had missed repeated deadlines in the past seven years mainly due to differences between the developing and developed countries over agriculture and non-agricultural market access.

    While rich nations were seeking more market access to the developing world for their industrial products, developing countries urged developed members to make a deeper cut of farm subsidies and tariffs for agricultural goods.

    "What we are going to be looking at today are the famous headline issues you guys have been writing about for so long, which do really require political intention," WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told reporters at a briefing.

    Rockwell said those issues included farm subsidies, agriculture tariffs and industrial goods tariffs, which analysts said were certain to trigger intense bargaining among developed and developing members.

    Ministers from three dozen WTO members including the United States, the European Union (EU), India and Brazil kicked off a crucial meeting Monday, which was billed as the last chance to strike a deal on the long-stalled Doha Round of global trade talks within the deadline of this year.

    Rockwell said those members used the first day mainly to express their broad positions and did not go into details.

    Despite high expectations for a breakthrough this time, Rockwell acknowledged there had been no sign of big change in the positions of different members.

    "Although no new position was expressed, the sense is we developed a clearer understanding of the key issues at the political level that need to be resolved in order to reach an agreement," Rockwell said, citing Lamy.

    At the end of Monday's talks, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim described the first day of meetings as "totally useless" owing to the absence of new ideas.

    "Maybe it was a necessary meeting, maybe we have to go through that but it was actually totally useless from my point of view, because I did not hear any new ideas, any new suggestion, let's wait for tomorrow," he told reporters.

    In a largely tactical move, the EU sweetened its offer by cutting its farm tariffs by 60 percent, up from 54 percent the 27-nation bloc had previously promised.

    However, the offer was on condition that emerging economies make reciprocal concessions on market access for industrial goods, which was dismissed by a Brazilian negotiator as mere "propaganda."

    Faced with pressure from other members, the United States offered on Tuesday to cut its annual ceiling of farm subsidies by 2 billion U.S. dollars to 15 billion U.S. dollars, demanding others move too to ensure the Doha Round of trade negotiations a success.

    "These cuts will deliver effective and significant reductions in trade distorting domestic support," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters.

    However, "these reductions are not offered in isolation and must be accompanied by significant market openings" in both agriculture and industrial products, she said.

    The new offer falls within the range of WTO proposals, which require Washington to cut trade-distorting farm subsidies to a range of 13 billion dollars to 16.4 billion dollars a year from the current ceiling of 48.2 billion dollars.

    But the U.S. move won little support from its opponents in the negotiations, notably India and Brazil.

    A Brazilian delegate said though it was a "nice try", the proposed new level was "still too high", while a member of the Indian delegation said it failed to pass the "laugh test."

    Developing countries were pushing the United States to make a deeper cut in its lavish farm subsidies since the current high food prices have made the spending less relevant.

    The current real U.S. spending on farm subsidies is about 7 billion dollars, less than half of the new offer.

    On the same front with Washington, the EU said the U.S. offer was reasonable but there was still more room for flexibility depending on how this week's trade talks progress.

    "This is a reasonable offer at this stage," said EU trade spokesman Peter Power.

    "It is not the furthest the U.S. could go, but we assume this depends on the remaining negotiations and a balance being achieved in other sectors," he added.