Uncompromising words and body language from US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, and other participants spell trouble for the ongoing World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations on agriculture. The draft negotiating document prepared by WTO farm negotiations chairman Stuart Harbinson zoomed to the top of the agenda at a recent Tokyo meeting when, even before the meeting began, Japanese Minister of Agriculture Tadamori Oshima rejected the paper's proposals for minimum cuts of between 25 and 45 per cent and average reductions of 40 to 60 per cent on all farm tariffs over five years. The European Union (EU) also attacked the Harbinson proposal as "unbalanced" for proposing that "trade-distorting" subsidies be cut by 60 per cent over five years and that export subsidies be phased out entirely over nine years. Both Japan and the EU denounced the paper as ensuring that the US would be the only victor in the negotiations. In the fight between the agro-export giants, the concerns of developing countries were conveniently lost, writes WTO-watcher Walden Bello.