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I'm not precisely sure if you can do that, but then again, I'm not a Developer either so I could be wrong.

Perhaps some kind of programatic change to the XML after you receive it might solve the problem, pivoting off of the date parameter:

http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Growing-Successful-Communities/Understanding-REST-API-query-string-parameters/ta-p/8721

Or perhaps you can tinker with the sort order parameter:

http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Growing-Successful-Communities/Understanding-linear-and-threaded-sorting-in-REST-API/ta-p/7151

http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Growing-Successful-Communities/REST-API-Problem-to-sort-messages/m-p/6415#M2006

but I'm not sure if any of those solutions would really work. Sorry if none of this is helpful.