Brussels, 19/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - In an interview to the Australian Financial Review on 19 September, Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, who declined the invitation from Australian minister for trade, Mark Vaile, to participate in a meeting this week of agricultural exporting countries and the Cairns Group, to relaunch Doha negotiations (EUROPE 9267), again rejected an Australian compromise proposal on modalities on agriculture and manufactured goods (NAMA). Mandelson thought the draft compromise proposed by Mr Vaile last August and which is expected to be discussed this week in Cairns, as “undoable and unacceptable”. The Australian plan suggests that the USA reduces domestic support to agriculture by $5 bn (to bring it down from $22.1 bn to $17.1 bn a year). It also proposes that the EU agrees to a reduction of 5 additional percentage points in its offer on the average cut in agricultural duties and that this is done on the basis of demands from emerging G20 countries, which are calling for a 54% reduction in these duties and not on the basis of a possible improved European offer that could go up to 51.5%. Although WTO Director General Pascal Lamy approved the Australian plan, Mr Mandelson believes that the plan “would go beyond what is reasonable” for Europe and would be “unacceptable” to developing countries. On the other hand he welcomed the fact that Mark Vaile “had joined the rest of the WTO ministers” criticising the USA's refusal to cut domestic support payments. Mr Mandelson also strongly criticised certain members of the Australian government for criticism they made about a European agricultural policy they claimed was protectionist. Mandelson accused the Australian prime minister John Howard of “being out of touch” with changes in European agriculture and sarcastically commented that, “He's a former trade minister whose views were formed of the European farm policies in the late1970s/early '80s. We have had more than two decades of reform since then”.