European Union trade chief Mr Pascal Lamy said yesterday that the Europeans were ready to compromise to get stalled world trade talks moving again but others must also be flexible.

In particular, he said the EU could drop a demand that the negotiations should be widened to include the four so-called "Singapore issues", covering new areas ranging from customs' practices to investment rules.

Talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on lowering global barriers to trade have been floundering since a failed meeting of trade ministers in Cancún, Mexico, last September.

Developing countries cited the EU's insistence on including the Singapore issues, named after the city where they were first aired, as one reason for the collapse of the conference.

"My sense is that there are areas, for instance the Singapore issues, where we should show flexibility," Mr Lamy told journalists. "What we are trying to do is to test...modifications here and there in our negotiating position with the understanding that if we do this, others will do it, too," he added. He said at Cancún, the EU had been prepared to accept only mild reform of industrial tariffs, which many leading developing countries, such as India, are wary of lowering too far.

But if the Singapore issues were left out of the main discussions and pursued separately by those countries that wanted to negotiate on them, then the EU could stiffen its demands when it came to cutting tariffs.

"The balance (between give and take) has to be kept," he said.

Mr Lamy was in Geneva for talks with WTO chief Mr Supachai Panitchpakdi and trade envoys about the prospects for relaunching the negotiations at a meeting of senior trade officials set for mid-December.

He said the EU, which has been accused by some WTO countries of lacking interest in trade talks since Cancún, was committed to "re-igniting" the negotiations.