GENEVA (AP) _ The United States' chief trade envoy on Wednesday

said Washington would support the struggling global trade talks

regardless of which party wins the upcoming U.S. presidential

election.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said she still hoped to

reach a breakthrough in the seven-year World Trade Organization

negotiation before leaving her post when U.S. President George W.

Bush's term ends January 20.

But should a long-sought agreement to open up farm and

industrial markets around the world remain out of reach, she said

the next American administration under Republican John McCain or

Democrat Barack Obama will continue to fight for a deal.

``I have heard nothing to lead me to conclude that either

candidate would abandon the Doha round,'' Schwab said in a

telephone interview with The Associated Press. ``There are only a

handful of us who are political appointees. The folks who have

developed these negotiating positions, the senior officials who

represent the United States year-in, year-out in Geneva are for the

most part career officials'' who will remain after Bush leaves

office.

Schwab, who will meet Thursday with WTO chief Pascal Lamy in

Washington, said a lot has been going on ``under the surface''

since nine days of WTO talks collapsed in July. She said the

discussions with Lamy, as with other key negotiators, would now

focus on how to secure an autumn revival of the trade round that

began in the Qatari capital of Doha in 2001 and came so close to a

major breakthrough before collapsing last month. Negotiators will

need to get back to the table soon ``if we are going to have chance

of reaching a near-term conclusion,'' she said.

The most significant WTO meeting in three years aimed to pull

off a broad compromise that, in short, would have let poor

countries sell more produce to rich countries while giving the

U.S., 27-nation EU and Japan new chances for their manufacturers

and service providers in the emerging markets of Brazil, China and

India.

While the trade talks have stumbled repeatedly in the last seven

years, July's failure was perhaps the most devastating. Faced with

global unrest from rising food prices, credit problems from shaky

financial markets and the threat of economic downturn, negotiators

hoped a deal on farm and manufacturing trade would help alleviate

these problems.

It was all the more disappointing because key commercial powers

such as the U.S., European Union, China, India and Brazil made

greater progress than they had in years on issues such as farm

subsidies and manufacturing tariffs _ which were responsible for

scuttling previous high-level trade efforts in Cancun, Mexico, in

2003 and Geneva three years later. Ultimately, the breakdown

centered on obscure ``safeguard'' tariffs for protecting

agricultural producers in the developing world from a sudden surge

in imports or drop in commodity prices.

Schwab, who clashed with top negotiators from China and India

over the emergency farm tariffs, said any new push would still

depend on ``advanced developing countries'' making appropriate

concessions given their increased importance in the global trading

system and the gains they would secure in any trade treaty.

But she rejected the notion that the safeguard alone stood in

the way _ then or now. ``There were some differences that weren't

even addressed,'' she said.

One of those issues was U.S. subsidies to American cotton

farmers, which some countries pointed to after the July collapse.

West African countries blame the U.S. payments for unfairly tilting

global cotton markets against their impoverished farmers, while

Brazil has successfully sued Washington at the WTO.

Schwab said the U.S. stands by a commitment it made to cut

cotton subsidies as part of a deal deeper and faster than for other

agricultural commodities. But the 153-nation WTO first needs to

finalize terms for corn, soybean, wheat and those other products

before the U.S. can address cotton, she said.

She said she hopes to get to that point soon, rejecting the

claim of some negotiators that a Doha deal is now impossible

because of of administration changes in the United States and

elsewhere over the next couple of years.

``There are always going to be elections. There are always going

to be politics intervening,'' she said, adding that the U.S. would

continue to look for a trade package that generates global growth,

alleviates poverty, creates new opportunities for American

exporters and combats protectionism at home and abroad.

``If there is a deal out there that meets those criteria, I

don't care when it shows up,'' Schwab said. ``We have to go for it.

It can't be dictated by our electoral cycle or anyone else's.''