KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 9 — Negotiations of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) appear at an impasse that may only be unlocked by major sacrifices of national interests by Asia-Pacific members, a new leak released today by whistleblower WikiLeaks suggests.

In a document purporting to be a summary of the state of negotiations following the latest round of talks between the 13 member states at Salt Lake City in the United States, deep divisions on key areas are appearing to form, as well revelations of arm-twisting by the US — seen as the key driver of the free trade deal — to expedite the conclusion of the years-long negotiations.

“As an overview, it should be mentioned that the US is exerting great pressure to close as many issues as possible this week,” read the opening line of the summary.

A key stumbling block was the refusal of the US to yield on the contentious Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause of the agreement, which critics contend would open signatory states to legal action by private corporations if any law is deemed harmful to a firm’s commercial interests.

More than any other, the ISDS has been held up as an example of how the TPPA would erode a nation’s sovereignty and allow corporations to subjugate citizens’ interests.

“The most important issue for the majority of members ... is the proposal by the US to apply ISDS to Investment Agreements and Investment Authorisations,” read an excerpt contained in the summary.

“Only the US and Japan support the proposal, while the rest expressed their objections ... but the US has shown no sign of flexibility...”

The summary also revealed the unhappiness of some member states over the insistence of the US to reintroduce a “Transparency Annexe on Medicine” that had been overwhelmingly discarded in previous rounds of negotiations.

“Some countries expressed annoyance for the way [the US, Australia and Japan] resubmitted a text that had been strongly rejected in the past.”

Last month, WikiLeaks published online a secret draft of one of the chapters under negotiation for the TPPA. In it were contained passages that confirmed critics’ fear that the deal would hamper access to generic drugs and cause healthcare costs to rise as a result.

Among others, the chapter included elements that could allow for “evergreen” patents that could be renewed indefinitely.

Accompanying the summary following the Salt Lake City round of talks, WikiLeaks also published a table showing the positions of the various countries on the different chapters of the TPPA.

Despite the reported eagerness for the US to see the negotiations wrapped up before the end of the year, the table depicted stalemates across the 14 chapters of the trade deal.

Malaysia also either rejected or is reserving its positions on nearly as many clauses as it has agreed to, illustrating its ambivalence towards the controversial agreement that Putrajaya has so far been supportive of in public.

Trade ministers and representatives are currently gathered in Singapore for the latest round of talks over the TPPA in an attempt to sew things up before the year is out, but analysts believe the possibility was now increasingly remote as some nations rankle over the allegedly “manipulative” tactics employed by the US.

President Barack Obama has hailed the TPP as a centrepiece of renewed US engagement in Asia, saying it contains market-opening commitments that go well beyond those made in other free-trade accords.

But the complexity of the issues has already caused negotiators to miss the original 2012 deadline set by Obama to reach a deal, with the new target also looking unlikely.

The TPPA is a free trade agreement that has been negotiated by the US, Malaysia and nine other nations as part of the larger Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership since 2010.

Critics allege that the agreement has since been co-opted by powerful corporations to allow them to trample over existing consumer, worker and environmental rights in signatory countries.

Up until the leaks, it had not been definitively known how much — if any — of the allegations against the agreement were true.

WikiLeaks is an international whistleblower organisation that rose to prominence in 2010 when it released troves of confidential US diplomatic cables that revealed political intrigue, espionage and other — often-embarrassing — revelations involving American embassies across the globe.