The United States wants to negotiate directly with individual major trading partners to push forward the World Trade Organisation's Doha round, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said on Thursday.

Kirk told a news conference that pursuing the negotiations in the traditional multilateral way would no longer work.

"We believe we have to start with an honest assessment that continuing on the same path that we have engaged in for the last three rounds will most likely yield the same result and that would be a failure to come to a successful conclusion," he said.

Kirk has also called on big emerging countries such as Brazil, China and India to open up their markets more to foreign goods to help secure a deal.

The big developing countries are resisting that call as well as the push for bilateral talks, which they fear could be used by the United States to reopen the incomplete package agreed by trade ministers last July as a basis for a Doha deal.

Most of the WTO's 153 members see that package as the starting point for finalising an deal on talks launched in late 2001 to free up world trade and help poor countries export more.

But Kirk said the United States still did not have a clear idea of what benefits it would receive from a deal, because the many exceptions to an overall agreement made the deal opaque.

"We think getting more clarity around that may be the key to helping us find a solution to a way forward," Kirk said.

HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP

Kirk said he did not believe that recent disputes launched by the United States and China against each other at the WTO were a sign of increasing trade tensions.

"Dispute resolution is a healthy sign of a mature trading relationship," Kirk said.

The United States and European Union launched a case against China on Tuesday for restricting exports of industrial raw materials.

China has also asked for a WTO panel to resolve a dispute with the United States over imports of Chinese poultry after consultations failed to settle the row.

"We are very hopeful with the EU also filing that we may be able to engage China in a more robust discussion that will allow us to resolve this," Kirk said.

But he warned European countries the United States would not hesitate to make a legal challenge to launch aid for the new Airbus A350 passenger jet and A400M military plane.

"If they do move forward with that, we will respond quickly and swiftly and file another action within the WTO," he said.

Kirk said the United States expected a result by the end of August in an existing case brought against the EU over earlier launch aid for Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. The EU has filed a counter-case against U.S. state support for Boeing aircraft.

"We think it is a grossly over-reaching example of government assistance in private industry and contrary to the WTO rules," Kirk said.