By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Long-running trade disputes between the United States and the European Union over beef and bananas are unlikely to be resolved by Monday, when President Clinton holds his last summit with EU leaders, EU and U.S. officials said on Friday.
But the talks could at least produce a commitment "that there is now grounds for a final go at something that might be acceptable," an EU official said at the weekly briefing by the European Commission's delegation.
Clinton and French President Jacques Chirac had hoped to resolve at least one of the two disputes, either beef or bananas, by the Dec. 18 summit. France's six-month presidency of the EU expires on Dec. 31 and Clinton leaves office on Jan. 20. The meeting on Monday will include European Commission President Romano Prodi.
On Thursday, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky told reporters she did not want to "prejudge" the outcome of the summit. But she noted the French presidency does not expire for another two weeks, suggesting that could be a new deadline for resolving one of the issues.
"I think we'll have to see. Sometimes these kinds of events are action-forcing. But frankly sometimes they're not," Barshefsky said.
The United States has retaliated on a total of $308.2 million EU goods in the two disputes for more than a year.
The meat spat centers on the EU's long-time ban on beef produced with artificial growth hormones, a common U.S. industry practice. The banana dispute concerns the EU's system of allocating access to its market, which the United States says discriminates against U.S. firms.
The World Trade Organization has sided with the United States in the two disputes. It authorized the Clinton administration to retaliate after the EU missed deadlines to bring its policies into compliance with world trade rules.
U.S. and EU officials have discussed crafting a temporary truce in the beef spat that would give U.S. cattle producers the opportunity to sell more "hormone-free" beef to the EU.
But the two sides have been unable to agree on the level of additional market access or the length of an agreement.
The United States and Canada currently share a quota to ship 11,500 tons of hormone-free beef to the EU annually.
The EU has proposed increasing the quota to about 30,000 tons for a period of four or five years. By that time, Brussels expects to have new legislation in place making its ban on hormone-treated beef legal under WTO rules.
The United States has balked at the short time frame, arguing it could take U.S. cattle producers two years to produce enough hormone-free beef to fill the expanded quota.
"We've impressed upon them that we would need to see something that would be of durability for us to move forward," a U.S. trade official told reporters.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials were in Brussels this week for talks on the banana dispute.
The EU has put forward a new "first-come, first-served" plan for reforming its banana import licensing system, which it says will bring it into compliance with WTO rules.
U.S. officials disagree and have offered a counterproposal that would allocate access to the EU banana market based on trade shares during a historical reference period.
The new U.S. proposal is an "amalgamation" of the current EU system and suggestions from Caribbean, African and Latin American countries, the U.S. trade official said.
"If Europeans want to resolve this quickly, they can just seize this opportunity," the aide said. "We think there is a possibility of reaching a settlement during this administration along the line of the framework.":
