CANCUN, Mexico (AFP) - WTO ministers got down to the nitty-gritty in a bid to break a deadlock blocking progress toward a new global trade pact amid few signs of headway.

The streets of downtown Cancun were relatively calm after violent anti-WTO protests and the suicide of a South Korean farmer marred the opening day of the talks on Wednesday.

Dozens of South Korean militants turned out to mourn the suicide and demand a halt to the five-day meeting, attended by about 4,600 delegates from the 146 WTO member states.

Ministers from members of the World Trade Organisation will be holed up in this Caribbean resort until Sunday, trying to salvage a multilateral deal to lower barriers to trade in farm products, industrial goods and services.

The broad outlines of the pact were worked out by WTO ministers in Doha, Qatar in 2001.

Agriculture is the key sticking point, with some countries still entrenched in years-old positions. In addition, fresh demands are emerging from newly-formed alliances that are growing on a daily basis.

Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry, George Yeo, who has been tasked with trying to close the gaps, reported earlier Thursday that divergences were still apparent after two days of meetings, WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said.

Yeo told delegates he had started to see signs of flexibility, Rockwell said, adding: "The flexibility that has been seen is not of a great substantive nature at the moment."

Ministers endorsed the admission of Nepal and Cambodia into the fold on Thursday, making them the first of the so-called least-developed countries to complete negotiations to join the WTO.

They are expected to become full-fledged members in the coming months.

Countries also clashed over whether to launch talks on new WTO rules on cross-border investment and the three other so-called Singapore issues, revealing a stark division between developing countries on the one hand and the EU and Japan on the other.

Yoriko Kawaguchi, Japan's foreign minister, said of the issues, named after the venue where they were first taken up, that "new rules would benefit us all, including developing members".

Views are so divergent that a draft ministerial declaration currently offers two opposing options — either to begin negotiations now or setttling for a statement that "the situation does not provide a basis for the commencement of negotiations."

The issue appears to be lining up behind agriculture as one of the hardest nuts to crack at the Cancun meeting.

But at a closed-door meeting, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told his colleagues Thursday that unless the Cairns Group of major farm exporters and the Group of 21 developing countries made some concessions, the talks would collapse, one of the delegates said.

While the United States and the European Union (news - web sites) have pledged to work for the reduction of farm subsidies, they are still far apart on how quickly such measures should be implemented.

Two other alliances, the 17-strong Cairns group led by Australia and the Group of 21 developing countries headed by Brazil, China and India, are pressing for deeper and faster cuts in subsidies.

The G-21 met the US and EU delegations for the first time in Cancun Thursday.

Brazilian (news - web sites) Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues said the meetings showed that the group of developing countries had become "an important actor" but added that the EU and US stance on export subsidies was not what they wanted to hear.

"But there is a dialogue going on. We are still hopeful that we can have some positive results," he told reporters.

But for its part, EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler's spokesman said the G-21 had not shown any flexibility over its demands on farm subsidies, market acccess and export subsidies.

WTO Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi on Thursday took on the leading role in efforts to deal with a demand by West and Central African cotton producing countries for an end to subsidies paid by rich nations to their own cotton farmers.