WASHINGTON, Sept 4: Senior trade officials will meet in Geneva next week to explore options for reviving world trade talks two months after the negotiations collapsed, US 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 US 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 US 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.

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