Meeting planned next week on reviving Doha: Schwab

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior trade officials will meet in Geneva next week to explore options for reviving world trade talks two months after the negotiations collapsed, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said on Thursday.

"Our approach to this hasn't changed ... We want to see the Doha round succeed," Schwab told reporters after a speech on opportunities for minority-owned businesses in world trade.

"We also know we're not the hold-up," Schwab said, repeating earlier U.S. criticism of the role both India and China played during a July meeting of trade ministers in Geneva that ended in failure.

"We were part of the Group of Seven in July pushing for, making the compromises to get a deal," Schwab said. "There were some less inclined to participate ... That doesn't mean you give up. You take another run at it."

The Doha round was launched nearly seven years ago in the capital city of Qatar with the goal of helping developing countries proposed through increased trade.

Joseph Glauber, the chief U.S. negotiator on agriculture, will travel to Geneva for next week's informal talks, which Schwab said would also cover manufactured goods.

The main reason for the July collapse was a sharp disagreement between the United States and India over the terms of a safeguard mechanism to allow developing countries to raise tariffs on agricultural imports in response to a surge.

Both were members of a smaller negotiating group, known as the G7, that WTO Director General Pascal Lamy assembled to try to fashion a deal that the larger membership could support.

CONFIDENCE LACKING

A trade diplomat, speaking on condition on anonymity, said next week's meetings would be a test of whether recent expressions of political will to revive the negotiations could be translated into a technical solution for the safeguards impasse, freeing up talks on other unresolved issues.

"Basically, there are only two camps now capable of blocking a deal -- the United States and India," the diplomat said. "Neither has the confidence that the other is willing to do a deal. We need a lot of serious activity in the next few weeks to find a solution for the United States and India."

Washington accused both India and China of demanding safeguard provisions that would allow developing countries to roll back previous trade commitments by raising tariffs in response to only normal growth in trade.

New Delhi said developing countries needed a safeguard mechanism that was quick and easy to use and subsistence farmers should not be put at risk because of the export ambitions of rich country producers.

Despite that discord, negotiators made "a huge amount of progress" on other farm, manufacturing and services trade issues at the heart of the Doha round talks, Schwab said.

The United States wants countries to try to capture and build on that progress, as well as reverse some serious "unraveling" that has occurred in the manufacturing negotiations since the July meeting, she said.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the EU was ready to reengage in the Doha round but reaching agreement would be difficult because of the impasse over the safeguard mechanism.

"We cannot stand still but equally is it difficult to move forward," Mandelson told the European Parliament late on Wednesday.

Schwab will discuss the Doha round with top Chinese officials in California the week of September 15.

(Additional reporting by William Schomberg in Brussels; Editing by Eric Walsh)