By Jason Subler
BEIJING, March 10 (Reuters) - China hopes the United States will stick to the promises the Bush administration previously made in the Doha round of world trade talks, Beijing's commerce minister said on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama's administration said in a report last week there would be no agreement in the long-running talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) until other countries make better offers to open their markets to U.S. goods, setting a high bar for a successful conclusion of the Doha round.
"We hope the United States can commit to the promises made by the previous administration -- that they don't carry out a review of or revisions to them," Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming told reporters after a news conference.
Chen added that he hoped the United States could work out its differences with developing countries over the special safeguard mechanism for agricultural products, which would allow developing countries to raise tariffs temporarily to protect their farmers from a surge in imports.
That issue has been an important sticking point in the seven-year-old talks. A ministerial meeting last July collapsed over it, and it was one of two measures blocking a meeting in December.
"In the areas where we are in disagreement, for example in calculating the agricultural special safeguard mechanism, we hope big developing countries can sit down with the U.S. for serious discussions on that -- then a conclusion to the Doha round would be relatively close," he said.
While some developing countries, particularly India, say the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers must be prioritised, the United States has argued the safeguard could be abused to cut existing export opportunities.
Chen reiterated that China is firmly opposed to protectionism and that a distinction must be made between trade protection measures permitted within the WTO framework and outright trade protectionism.
However, he said "misuse" of allowed trade protection measures did amount to protectionism and should be contained.
China is the world's biggest target of anti-dumping investigations by countries that say its companies are selling their products at below market prices, and Beijing has complained to the WTO that it is being unfairly targeted by some of them. (Editing by Jerry Norton)