UPDATE 1-EU points at U.S. for WTO collapse, U.S. hits back

(Adds U.S. comment)

By William Schomberg

BRUSSELS, July 30 (Reuters) - The European Union's trade chief Peter Mandelson said on Wednesday the United States helped to bring down global trade talks this week when its negotiators shunned a compromise proposal at a key juncture in the talks.

The United States hit back and accused the EU of having tried to undo a carefully crafted set of compromises because it was under fire from European governments including France.

The proposal in question was drawn up by the EU on Tuesday in a last-gasp bid to unblock an impasse over an agricultural trade issue being discussed by seven powers at the centre of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks.

Mandelson initially declined to point fingers, calling the collapse of the talks a collective failure. But his frustration at Washington was clear in a weblog he wrote on Wednesday, describing the events of the previous day when the talks failed.

"...when WTO chief (Pascal) Lamy reconvenes the Group of Seven negotiators at midday, the Indians and the Chinese express reservations and the U.S. rejects the proposal outright, much to Lamy's understandable frustration," Mandelson said.

"It seems that the issue on which we have diverged is more important for some than agreement as a whole. Instead of reaching out for help to solve the problem, they are digging in," he said.

After that, a U.S. official "simply does not show up" when negotiations resume and U.S. trade chief Susan Schwab, heading into the finale of the negotiations, stopped off in the press room "to get her rebuttal in first," Mandelson wrote.