Friday, July 28 2006 17:39 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The US will try to revive world trade talks that broke down this week, but any deal would have to let the US 'compete fairly', President George W. Bush said yesterday. Bush said he stood by his offer to cut subsidies to farmers, but that other countries would have to give more market access to US products. "We'll reduce them, just so long as our folks have got access to markets. That's all we ask," he said.

"Just give us a chance to compete fairly. And so we'll continue to work on this agreement," Bush added.

The dispute over cutting subsidies to farmers has bedevilled talks between the US, European Union, Australia, Brazil, India and Japan.

A meeting of these countries was organised to revive momentum toward a global market-opening deal, which was suspended Tuesday after negotiators in Geneva failed to bridge differences. Speaking to a manufacturing group in Washington, Bush said that a deal in the five-year-old Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks would benefit US workers and make poor countries richer. "We're very much in favour of it moving forward," he said. "We think it makes a lot of sense," Bush added.

Looking at a protectionist sentiment in the US, he warned lawmakers who would have to approve any WTO deal that the nation could not throw up trade walls and barriers around the United States. After the Geneva breakdown, the EU blamed the US for refusing deeper cuts in farm supports, while the US said it would not roll back the subsidies to pre-depression levels without better market access in Europe and to fast-growing economies like China, India and Brazil. Negotiators had set a target of wrapping up a deal by the end of the year, but that effort now appears in tatters. The December deadline was dictated by the looming expiration in mid-2007 of special US presidential powers to negotiate on trade.