The comments from the non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has been critical of the WTO came at an expanded meeting of the Cairns group of agricultural exporters aimed at putting the global trade talks back on track.

"For all our criticism of the WTO, it's the only show in town," Oxfam Australia's executive director Andrew Hewett told delegates late Wednesday.

"We want the round back on track and to deliver decent developmental terms," he said in a panel session with WTO director-general Pascal Lamy.

"We've recognised increasingly that to build a sustainable pathway out of poverty, not just a handout here or there, it's going to require interventions at different levels -- from the micro to the macro -- using different levers, be they trade, debt relief or aid," he said.

Saying Lamy's view that global trade talks might resume within six months was overly optimistic, Hewett was however adamant that an agreement was key to helping struggling nations become self-sufficient.

The collapse of the Doha round would likely give rise to a flurry of bilateral deals that would ultimately disadvantage developing countries, he said.

"What will tend to happen -- and what is happening -- is developing countries will easily be isolated from those agreements because they're not seen to be bringing enough to the table," Hewett said.

At the same time, Oxfam believes that reviving the Doha round is unlikely without strong political leadership to change the domestic debate in both the United States and European Union, whose disagreement over cuts to farm subsidies led to the suspension of negotiations, he said.

Between them, the EU and US spent more than one billion dollars a day to subsidise their agricultural produce, Hewett said.

"That's the absurdity, the monstrosity -- the insanity -- of how the agricultural trade system works at the moment."

Oxfam is the only NGO to attend the meeting in Australia's far north aimed at bringing the United States and the European Union back to the negotiating table after Lamy suspended the trade talks in July.