(Adds USTR quote in fourth paragraph)
By Laura MacInnis and Darren Ennis
GENEVA/BRUSSELS, Nov 26 (Reuters) - World Trade Organization judges Wednesday upheld a ruling against the European Union in the long-running "banana war" pitting Brussels against the United States and Latin American producers.
In its consideration of an EU appeal, the WTO's top court backed the findings of a WTO compliance panel that said the EU was continuing to discriminate against Latin American producers in the way it calculates tariffs on imported bananas.
"The WTO has for the eighth time ruled against the European Union for the inconsistency of its banana regime with its multilateral trade rules obligations," Ecuador's mission to the WTO said in a statement about the Appellate Body ruling.
"It is time for the EU to do the right thing and implement a tariff-only regime for bananas that meets the interests of all parties involved," said U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, in a statement.
Brussels responded by saying it accepted the ruling, and intended to seek a resolution to the long-standing dispute in the context of negotiations over the Doha Round global trade treaty, which world leaders are seeking to clinch next month.
"The EU considers the Doha Round to be the right forum to find a resolution," it said in a statement.
The United States -- whose companies Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole have plantations in Latin America -- and Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico are among those pursuing WTO litigation over the EU banana regime, which they say favours former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific.
Latin American states came close to securing a deal with the EU during a WTO ministerial meeting in July, but Brussels walked away from the deal when the broad Doha negotiations fell apart.
The EU said in its statement it was ready to try again.
"We are ready to take up the negotiations on a deal on bananas with all suppliers where they were left in July, and settle this long-standing dispute once and for all," it said.
Ecuador, the world's top banana exporter, has said it will require resolution of the banana dispute as a condition for accepting any deal in the Doha round, which requires full consensus among the WTO's 153 members to be agreed.
The Association of Ecuadorean Banana Exporters said it may be necessary to impose sanctions if Brussels offers anything less than what was on the table in its July proposal.
"If it requires sanctions and further challenges to achieve that result, then that is what we must do," the group's executive director Eduardo Ledesma said.
Negotiations are underway in Geneva to lay the groundwork for trade ministers to seek a breakthrough in the seven-year-old Doha round, perhaps as early as next month.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy is looking for advances in those talks before inviting ministers to seek a potential deal in the accord that would cut tariffs, subsidies, and other trade barriers on a wide array of traded goods and services.
(For the full WTO Appellate Body report see: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/27abrw_conc_e.pdf) (Reporting by Laura MacInnis; Editing by Diana Abdallah)