Kenya yesterday urged other African countries to adopt a spirit of compromise in negotiations aimed at ending the impasse on the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks.

"Without sacrificing the principles and fundamental issues that we stand for, we cannot be successful negotiators unless we have some negotiating room," Kenya's Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi told reporters in Nairobi.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of government officials and private sector representatives from 12 African countries to discuss how to revive deadlocked world trade liberalisation talks.

"We should show a certain level of flexibility so that we can be ready to make concessions in order to harvest from what is the most important issue.

"That requires that we start putting content in the right positions, then ranking our priorities and finally having the political will to surrender some of our positions in order to harvest," said Mukhisa.

Negotiations aimed at resurrecting the Doha round of talks started in Geneva last week with WTO's 146 member states trying to reach an agreement on the nettlesome issue of agriculture before the end of July.

The Geneva discussions will also address market access for non-agricultural products and cotton, as well as the so-called Singapore issues - whether the WTO should have control over investment, competition, government procurement and trade facilitation.

"At all the trade meetings, it is our intention to deepen that sense of ranking priorities and being flexible to allow for progress on negotiations because we are the principal stakeholders in the success of the Doha rounds," Kituyi said.

"We must do what it takes to make it successful," he added.

Kituyi said "rigidity" by African representatives was partly to blame for the collapse of WTO negotiations in the Mexican resort town of Cancun last year.

Developing countries, backed by major farm exporters such as Australia and Canada, demanded in Cancun that the biggest trading powers, the US and the European Union, dismantle subsidies for farm exports. – Sapa-AFP.