"Ministers agreed that to achieve the full promise of economic development and global growth within the Doha development agenda, meaningful effort was necessary across the three core areas of agriculture, goods and services," a US official told AFP after the informal meeting.

The get-together, which began over dinner Friday night, was described by the official as "constructive and productive".

"The atmosphere was one of open exchange about priorities for moving forward the Doha development agenda in the short time period ahead," he said.

The meeting was hosted by US trade representative Robert Zoellick, and involved EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, Kenyan Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi, his South African counterpart Alec Erwin and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim.

According to EU officials, the goal was to define a package of proposals that would incite the G90 group of 90 developing nations to make the so-called Doha round of global trade talks a success. The aim, they said, was to successfully conclude the Doha round by January 1, 2005.

The trade negotiations have been on the back burner since the failure of a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003.

Kituyi represented the G90 on Saturday, while Erwin and Amorim are leading members of the G20, a group of 20 large developing countries which emerged at the Cancun meeting as a major actor in global trade talks.

A major concern of the G90 countries, most of which are African, is that a broad lowering of trade barriers as part of the Doha round would erode preferential access they currently enjoy to developed countries' markets.

The US official said that further informal meetings were planned between negotiators in the coming months.