Peasant farmers in the West African state of Burkina Faso launched a protest campaign on Thursday against the economic partnership agreements the European Union is negotiating with 75 of the world's poorest countries.

"These agreements will just reduce the poor peasants of the south from being producers to being simple consumers suffocated by heavily-subsidised products from the rich countries," Francois Traore, head of the Burkina Peasant Farmers' Confederation, told AFP.

For decades, the 25-nation EU has operated preferential trade accords with the 75 nations in the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of nations.

But World Trade Organisation rules mean the lower trade tariffs the EU has offered the ACP states, most of them former European colonies, must be phased out by 2008, so the European bloc is seeking to come up with new arrangements.

Aid agencies ActionAid and Oxfam, as well as some EU members and ACP countries, have accused the EU of negotiating the new economic partnership agreements more with commercial interests than development objectives in mind.

Burkina's main peasant farmers' association agrees.

"We have launched a nationwide campaign and hope to get 60,000 signatures for a petition to be handed in to the president during Peasant Farmers' Day in December," Nombre Eloi, a member of the Confederation, told AFP.

The European Commission -- the EU's executive arm -- argues that successive rounds of WTO trade liberalisation have globally reduced tariffs, gradually eroding the advantages that the current EU-ACP accords give to the developing countries. So it makes sense to replace them, the argument runs.

"Economic partnership agreements will fundamentally change our relationship, from one that offers tariff preferences -- an eroding lifeline -- to one that builds lasting regional and international markets for the ACP," European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson insisted on October 16.

But the Burkina Peasant Farmers' Confederation is not convinced.

"Forty years ago, African peasant farmers consumed 98 percent of what they produced. Now they have been reduced to consuming heavily-subsidised products from the north," Traore said.

The confederation has set up several stalls at the ongoing International Ouagagougou Craftworkers Fair, which is this year focusing on fair trade, to press home the arguments behind its campaign. The protect has already won the support of several international aid agencies.

Farmers in Burkina, one of the poorest countries in Africa, have for the past five years been suffering the consequences of falling world cotton prices. Nearly a third of the country's inhabitants depend on cotton farming for their living and trade in the crop brings in 60 percent of state revenue.