French stand their ground: New administration maintains the agricultural policy laid down by its predecessor

(First Edition)

THE NEW French government yesterday kept alive the threat hanging over international trade talks, telling its EC partners that its position on a farm trade deal with the US remained the same as its predecessor.

The Blair House agreement, struck last year, headed off a transatlantic trade war over oilseeds. It also covers a broad range of agricultural issues which are being considered separately under the General Agreement on Tarifs and Trade.

France has always said that it believes the agreement went too far. Alain Juppe, the new foreign minister, said yesterday that the government of Edouard Balladur was consistent in its views with the outgoing government of Pierre Beregovoy.

A French veto of the oilseeds agreement would jeopardise not only US-EC relations but the whole Gatt round. Mr Juppe was not pressed by his fellow foreign ministers and there was no demand for a vote on the issue.

Ministers seemed to accept that this was not the time to confront the government, said a French official. A British official said the oilseeds section of the agreement was unlikely to come to a vote until June or July.

Yesterday's meeting was something of a 'pantomime', officials said, intended to put down markers for the future debate. The EC is separately trying to ease trade tension with the US over steel, public procurement and aircraft subsidies.

Sir Leon Brittan, the EC's external trade commissioner, yesterday told his colleagues that he had put forward new ideas on solving the row over public procurement, but emphasised that the EC would not withdraw article 29 of its controversial Utilities Directive - the source of the row - without equivalent US concessions.

His conversations with Mickey Kantor, the US trade representative, had convinced him that the US was not going back on a controversial agreement on aircraft subsidies, said Sir Leon. He added that the US administration was clearly working towards a target of the end of this year for concluding the Gatt round and said that 'nothing will be gained by prolonging the negotiations' beyond this point.