Brazilian trade negotiators will travel to the United States and India this week to try to revive the stalled Doha round of global trade talks, the country's chief trade representative said.

Last week, trade officials from the United States, the European Union and Japan said they wanted to revive Doha and complete a global trade deal early this year.

Reaching a global trade deal depends heavily on Brazil and India, two of the world's largest developing nations, after a dispute over agricultural tariffs derailed the Doha talks in July. "We're not going with a deadline. We're just going to talk over points of difficulty and look for conditions to reach an agreement," Brazil's chief trade representative, Roberto Azevedo, said of trips to India and the United States.

Some experts say it may be difficult to finalize the details of a global agreement before July 1, when trade promotion authority, or TPA, expires in the United States.

Trade promotion authority, which allows the president to negotiate pacts that cannot be amended by Congress, will expire unless renewed by the US Congress. It took the White House nearly two years to win trade promotion authority from a Republican-controlled Congress.

Getting an extension could be even more difficult now that Democrats control Congress. "In these types of talks, you don't want to negotiate everything twice, so TPA is an important ingredient," Azevedo said.

Azevedo said he will travel to Washington on Tuesday for meetings with congressmen and other officials, including Richard Crowder, the chief agricultural negotiator for the Office of the US Trade Representative. He will travel to India over the weekend for two days of meetings next week.

Brazil and India are key forces in the G-20, a group of developing nations that banded together in the midst of the Doha talks mainly to demand lower tariffs on agricultural exports.

(Published by Reuters, January 17, 2007)