By Gilbert Le Gras
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Agriculture officials from South America's leading food producers will meet in Buenos Aires on Monday to reach common ground on trade and food safety issues ahead of a meeting with the European Union in April.
Brazilian Agriculture Minister Marcus Vinicius Pratini de Moraes and Argentine Agriculture Secretary Antonio Berhongaray will try to settle trade rifts over pork, chickens, rice, wheat, dairy products and honey between their two nations, Argentine agriculture officials said.
But they will also plan how to present a united front in pressing their trade demands on the EU. South America's top two economies are senior partners in the Mercosur trade bloc, the world's third largest, which wants greater access to the EU.
The European customs union buys about 20 percent of world farm exports but Mercosur member nations, including Paraguay and Uruguay, complain the EU is protectionist, depriving them of market share and keeping prices low. A meeting of trade officials from Mercosur and the EU is scheduled for April 5.
The European Commission authorized trade negotiations on non-tariff aspects exclusively, setting aside talk of dismantling customs duties until after 2001.
Mercosur nations, however, want to discuss all issues especially those it considers market distorting such as tariff barriers and EU export subsidies now.
"I want to be cautious, but there are greater chances of discussing how unviable market-distorting measures can be," Argentine Foreign Minister Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini said in a statement upon his return from Portugal.
Giavarini and other Latin American government ministers met with their EU counterparts in Vilamoura, Portugal, last week to discuss closer trade ties and issued a statement calling for a new round of multilateral trade talks.
"We can be cautiously optimistic, not only based on the final EU-Mercosur statement but also the one with the Rio Group that includes agriculture and services as issues to be negotiated with the World Trade Organization," Giavarini said.
The South Americans are major players on world food markets. Brazil is the world's largest sugar producer and biggest grower and exporter of coffee. Brazil and Argentina are the world's second- and third-largest soybean producers and a quarter of the world's cattle herd feeds on the grasslands of Mercosur member nations.
Another item on Monday's agenda is a proposal by Vinicius Pratini de Moraes to set common food safety standards to facilitate trade in chicken and citrus fruits between his country and Argentina.
Trade tensions between the two countries ran high last year after Brazil devalued its currency more than 30 percent while Argentina's peso remains convertible at par to the dollar. This effectively made Argentine exports more expensive in the Brazilian marketplace.
Many disputes have been settled or are on their way to resolution such as a pending auto pact but Brazil took the unprecedented step last week of asking a WTO panel to probe its Mercosur partner's import duties on cotton textiles.:
