SAO PAULO, Brazil -- In the bitter aftermath of the World Trade Organization talks in Mexico, Brazil aims to bolster its agricultural bargaining clout -- and raise its global profile -- by forging a wider coalition of countries bent on slashing U.S. and European Union farm subsidies.

Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said in an interview that the group of more than 20 developing nations led by Brazil in Cancun will work with the Cairns Group, a 17-member bloc of farm powerhouses, including Canada and Australia, to pursue a WTO accord for freer farm trade. "We have a role in both groups," says Mr. Amorim. "They can't be merged, but they can be associated and work together."

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has cast Brazil as a spoiler at Cancun, where 10 days ago an impasse between rich and poor nations put the current round of global trade talks in jeopardy and added an obstacle to a U.S.-proposed Western Hemisphere free-trade zone. Brazilian officials defend their role in seeking a farm accord as constructive, noting that in the end it was investment issues, not farm trade, that directly brought about the collapse of the talks.

While disappointed that the meeting failed, officials here say Cancun may prove a turning point for Brazilian diplomacy. The activism that flourished there shows that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is making good on his pledge to raise Brazil's international voice. In a speech at the United Nations Tuesday, Brazil's first working-class president sought to enlist the world body in an antihunger drive, urged the expansion of the Security Council to developing countries like Brazil , criticized U.S. policy in Iraq and touted the centerpiece of his foreign policy: the political and economic integration of South America.

Mr. Amorim, a 61-year-old career diplomat, emerged as the glue of the so-called G-20-plus bloc. The group is heavily Latin American but also includes Asia's most populous countries -- China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan -- as well as three African states. Mr. Amorim says that the group may yet grow and that despite the political and economic differences among its members, "what we have in common is that we all suffer terribly from subsidies of rich countries." Brazil says subsidies cost it $10 billion a year in farm trade.

Brazil's diplomatic strategy was to avoid polarizing the farm debate as just rich versus poor. A major producer of coffee, sugar, orange juice and soybeans, Brazil is also a member of the Cairns Group. The G-20-plus worked with the wealthy Australia on farm proposals in Cancun and came close to enlisting another Cairns member, New Zealand, in the group, Mr. Amorim says. Poor countries dependent on family farmers have been suspicious of the Cairns Group, whose members boast powerful agribusiness industries and account for one-third of global farm exports.

"Now we have overtures [between the groups] that are coming to fruition," Mr. Amorim says. "We are already working together."

Marcos Jank, a trade expert who advised Brazil's agriculture minister in Cancun, says cooperation between the G-20-plus and Cairns groups would enhance Brazil's bargaining clout and credibility. "It's more important for Brazil to look for a larger alliance with the Cairns members than to go with the Third World," says Mr. Jank, president of the Institute for International Trade Negotiations, a Sao Paulo think tank. "This isn't a North-South issue. The postcolonial era is over."

And a Canadian cabinet member, Wheat Board Minister Ralph Goodale, said after Cancun that Ottawa should explore a coalition between poorer countries and the Cairns Group to push for deep cuts to U.S. and European farm subsidies.

More broadly, Brazil is spreading its diplomatic wings to establish itself as a bigger player in regional affairs. In an unusual gesture, Brazil last week offered to host, but not mediate, talks between the U.N. and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the guerrilla group that has been waging civil war in Colombia. Brasília is also seeking a free-trade deal by year's end with Colombia, a close U.S. ally.

"What's beginning to happen is the engagement of Brazil as a power," says Kenneth Maxwell, director of the Latin America program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He sees an irony. After years of Washington pushing free-market policies on Brazil , he says, "if the economic policies pay off, dealing with a successful, capitalist, globalized Brazil is going to be much tougher."