* WTO mediators say new proposals show deal in sight
* More negotiations needed starting next week
* EU, U.S. business and farmers sceptical
By Jonathan Lynn
(Adds U.S. comments graphs 6-7, Brazil graphs 9-10)
GENEVA, May 20 (Reuters) - A long-awaited global trade deal is now in sight, the mediators of the main farm and industry negotiations said on Tuesday.
But a day after the World Trade Organization (WTO) issued new agriculture and industrial goods proposals, businesses and farmers in the United States and European Union were protesting that the revised texts did not go far enough to open up markets in big developing country such as Brazil, China and India.
"Anybody ... can now see clearly the summit that you're trying to climb," said New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, who chairs the farm talks.
"We've got through ... the cloud layer, we're getting pretty thin on oxygen but the task now is that on the basis of this we can go on and finish the job," he told a news conference.
In Washington, U.S. business officials were less optimistic about the chances for a long-awaited breakthrough.
"I think we need a doctor for Doha," said Christopher Wenk, senior director for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It's becoming harder and harder to imagine there could be a deal by the end of the year."
The new industrial goods text does not appear to do enough to pry open advanced developing country markets, Wenk said. But "these revised texts are not the final package," so there's still hope for an acceptable deal, he said.
The revised texts issued on Monday are the latest stage in the WTO's Doha round of trade talks, launched in late 2001 but since then mired in wrangling between rich and poor nations. Its aim is to open up world trade and help developing countries export more.
The new texts open the way for a meeting of ministers to agree to an outline deal by taking the big political decisions on the scope of tariff and subsidy cuts. But with some gaps still to be closed, the timing of that meeting remains uncertain.
Brazil said the texts required much work to serve as the basis for a possible ministerial meeting.
"Key questions remain undefined, such as the limits on subsidies and tariffs of the most advanced economies, which distort the market most," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
DEVELOPMENT MANDATE
Poor countries say the Doha round's development mandate puts the onus on rich countries to do more to open up their markets and correct distortions in the world trading system, particularly in agriculture.
Talks on farming are key to the Doha round and have been holding back discussions in other areas, leading Canada's WTO ambassador Don Stephenson, who chairs the industrial goods talks, to express frustration at the lack of progress.
"The thing that makes me hopeful is that we're getting close to the end. We're getting close to the point where agriculture is sufficiently clear that those members will finally engage," he told a separate news conference.
The key elements in an overall deal are already clear.
The United States will cut its trade-distorting subsidies, which squeeze poor-country farmers out of their markets. The European Union will open up its protected food market by cutting farm tariffs. And developing countries will open up their markets for manufactures to rich-country corporations.
Other elements would include a boost to South-South trade and liberalization of services such as banking and telecoms.
Developing countries want waivers to tariff cuts to protect their subsistence farmers and fledgling industries, while rich nations say they cannot sell the sacrifices being asked of them unless they can point to gains in market access elsewhere.
Negotiations will resume on the new texts next week but the time for a ministerial meeting is fast running out, as negotiators will need several months to flesh out an outline agreed by ministers.
WTO's 152 member states have agreed to finish the round by the end of this year, before the negotiations run up against a change of U.S. administration in 2009.
India's Commerce Secretary Gopal Pillai welcomed the more streamlined text on farming but said the industrial goods text needed further refinement before ministers could meet, as too many issues remained open.
The European farmers' group COPA COGECA said the proposals meant European farmers would lose at least 30 billion euros ($46.71 billion) a year that would not be made up by gains in industry or services.
In Germany, Europe's biggest economy and the world's biggest exporter, the BDI business lobby said the new proposals made it difficult to achieve an ambitious conclusion to Doha.
"The European Commission and EU member states must push for the reduction of industrial tariffs in emerging nations," said top BDI official Carsten Kreklau. "A one-sided reduction by industrialized nations is completely unacceptable."
Europe's biggest employers' lobby EuroBusiness expressed concern the new proposals would allow developing countries to shield entire industrial sectors from imports.
