LUXEMBOURG -- France insisted on Friday it would not accept "just any deal" towards a major overhaul of the EU farming subsidy system, while Germany said it sided with France but had persuaded Paris to accept certain changes.

EU ministers have four days to mull over the reform before reconvening on Tuesday to try to end almost a year of deadlock.

France, the biggest beneficiary of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), objects to plans to break the link between subsidies to farmers and food production, so-called decoupling, in a bid to prevent further EU butter mountains and wine lakes.

The CAP eats up nearly half of the EU's 100 billion euro ($117.5 billion) annual budget and has been widely criticized for distorting world trade and holding back farming in developing countries.

Germany, the CAP's biggest paymaster, has sided with some of France's objections after persuading Paris to accept partial decoupling. EU farm ministers' talks were broken off late on Thursday.

"Germany has decided to help (France) politically, but at the same time France has also moved," Schroeder told France's Europe 1 radio.

However, French President Jacques Chirac, speaking to farmers on Friday, made it clear France was not ready to capitulate. "We will not agree to just any deal," he said.

"The CAP is a good policy. It is the trunk around which Europe has grown... I will continue to defend the CAP," he said. EU Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler, architect of the reform, will present a second compromise paper after the first one, tabled on Wednesday, got only a lukewarm reception.

"There is a lot of food for thought and what the ministers should do and what we must do is digest this food and come back with the result," said Fischler at a news conference on Friday.

"If we have a half-hearted reform, it will enable our critics in Europe and the rest of the world to shoot the CAP down in flames," he said.

Agreement on reforming EU farm policy is key to kick-starting the stalled Doha Round of trade liberalization talks before a World Trade Organization meeting in September.

The United States, one of the fiercest critics of the EU's farming regime, was quick to attack the Franco-German deal.

"Without the adoption of a more market-oriented approach by the EU, it will be much more difficult to succeed in further liberalization of agricultural trade at the WTO," U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said.