(Fixes link to WTO sound file)

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA, June 3 (Reuters) - Agriculture negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will continue next week as delegates try to narrow differences ahead of a possible meeting of ministers, the chairman of the talks said on Tuesday.

The efforts in agriculture contrast with the parallel discussions on industrial goods, where a frustrated mediator suspended talks on Monday, saying it was pointless to meet when delegates were unwilling to negotiate or compromise.

"As long as they still want to keep talking in agriculture then there's every reason to keep on doing that. We've certainly got plenty that we can go on with," New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, who chairs the farm talks, told reporters after a review of the latest farm proposals.

Falconer said the "breather" in industrial goods, which he said was not dramatic, had not so far affected farm talks.

But it could eventually block the next stage of negotiations -- trade-offs between agriculture and manufactured goods to open up markets, which are at the core of the talks.

"We are in de facto parallel negotiations anyway. One file can't advance with the other," said one developing country diplomat. "The membership is at a crossroads -- you can't come here and have all these negotiations and not be moving."

Ministers meeting this week in Paris on the sidelines of an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conference must tell delegates to get back to the negotiating table, said a spokesman for European Union trade chief Peter Mandelson.

"Either senior negotiators go back to Geneva and start real and genuine negotiations or indeed we will face a situation of stalemate and suspension," Peter Power said in Brussels.

TRADE-OFFS

The WTO's Doha round to open up world trade, now in its seventh year, has entered a crucial phase in the past few weeks.

Senior officials are expected to start trade-offs in the coming weeks in the core areas of agriculture and industrial goods to prepare the way for ministers to take the big political decisions for an outline deal possibly this month or next.

WTO members want to wrap up the overall deal this year to avoid the talks being caught up in the change of U.S. administration and new EU Commission in 2009.

Soaring food prices that have created unrest and hunger in developing countries and which are blamed on distortions in the world trading system have added urgency to the talks.

At Tuesday's farm talks, Australia for the Cairns group of food exporters and Brazil for the G-20 group of developing countries both criticised the new $289 billion U.S. Farm Bill for pushing up subsidies when the talks aim to cut support.

New proposals from mediators two weeks ago, based on the past nine months' negotiations, are intended to serve as the blueprint for the meeting of ministers.

Falconer said WTO members had made incremental progress since then on some issues. Delegations this week were studying the technical details of proposals to shield sensitive farm products from the full impact of tariff cuts.

A small group of major food exporters and members of the G-33 group of developing countries, known as the "Walk in the Woods" Group, has also formed to explore differences over special treatment for poor countries' farm imports.

But in industrial goods, delegates have barely budged on long-standing disagreements over different levels of tariff cuts for rich and poor countries, and special treatment for poor countries that U.S. and EU business lobbies say would allow them to shield entire sectors from market opening.

Rich countries have also objected to proposals that give recent WTO members such as China up to 15 years to implement tariff cuts in recognition of the big cuts they made when they joined the organisation.

A senior Chinese official said China was still cutting tariffs this year as a result of its accession, which had led to China importing $200 billion a year -- a big contribution to the world economy.

"Actually our industries are under a heavy pressure from restructuring as a result of the recent implementation of liberalisation and accession commitments and we need to help sensitive sectors find shelter," he said.

If a final deal on industrial goods meets China's needs Beijing would accept that, otherwise it reserved the right to draw on the special treatment that new members are entitled to. (Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Brussels) (To listen to WTO industrial goods chairman Don Stephenson's concluding remarks to WTO members on Monday, click on : http://www.wto.org/audio/stephenson_2008_06_02_closing.mp3 )