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.

"There will be multiple meetings going on in Geneva next week," Schwab told reporters after a speech. "Our approach to this hasn't changed ... We want to see the Doha round succeed. We want to see it move forward."    

The nearly seven-year-old round of world trade talks suffered its latest setback in July at a meeting of trade ministers from about 30 key World Trade Organization members.

Next week's talks will take be held at the "senior officials" level, rather than the topmost political level of trade ministers, Schwab said.

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.

Even so, 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 as much of that progress as they can, as well as reverse some "unraveling" that has occurred in the manufacturing negotiations since the July meeting, she said.

At the same time, it is unrealistic to believe that a July 25 package crafted by WTO director general Pascal Lamy and supported by the United States could be the basis for resumed negotiations, Schwab said.

"We can't pretend to ourselves that, 'poof,' you can recreate July 25. You can't do that. But let's capture the progress we made and do our best to prevent the erosion," Schwab said. - Reuters