Hurd bemoans US-Japan deals

TOKYO - Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday criticised bilateral trade deals between Japan and the US which shut out Britain and other EU countries, and called for further deregulation in Japan's markets, writes Terry McCarthy. Mr Hurd is on a three-day visit to Japan after touring Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong. There should be 'no prior agreements or fixed levels of imports regardless of the quality of the goods sold or the price charged for them', he said, hitting out at US attempts to prise open Japanese markets with numerical targets for trade.