By Axel Bugge
BRASILIA, March 2 (Reuters) - Latin America's largest country, Brazil, said on Thursday the United States showed "intransigence" at world trade talks in Seattle last year, and has yet to show real interest in relaunching negotiations.
Speaking after talks with a senior visiting U.S. official, Brazil's chief trade negotiator Jose Alfredo Graca Lima said the United States is not engaging itself in relaunching talks to liberalize world trade.
"It (the United States) has a narrow (trade) agenda which, only with difficulty, can be considered as a sign of real engagement, proactive engagement of the multilateral trade system," Graca Lima said. "This is worrying."
The official said the "United States is considered to a large extent to be responsible for what happened in Seattle," when talks to liberalize trade failed amid acrimony and rioting in the streets.
Graca Lima said the United States "showed a very strong intransigence to various proposals," in Seattle, adding that the European Union showed much more negotiating flexibility on a range of issues.
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Alan Larson arrived in Brasilia on Wednesday and has met with Central Bank President Arminio Fraga and other senior Brazilian economic officials.
The United States has irked Brazil on a series of trade issues recently. Among them was the imposition of tariffs on line pipe steel imports from various countries, including Brazil, in a move to protect the U.S. domestic industry.
Brazil was also angered in Seattle when the U.S. appeared to want to put child labor rights on the agenda for trade talks. Brazil and many other developing nations argued such a move could become just another way to block imports from the developing world.
Brazil also complains of what it calls protectionism from the United States on products ranging from orange juice to sugar.
"There is a long list of export products that face access problems to the American market, which is a factor that does not fit in well with the excellence of the relations between the two countries," Graca Lima.
Among Brazil's top irritations is that while the United States's anti-dumping laws are WTO-approved, the U.S. invokes them too frequently to protect its industries, thereby creating an anti-free trade impression among its trading partners.
The official added that after the failure of the Seattle talks, efforts are underway to launch trade talks again and overcome the intransigence of the United States. He stressed the movement is not only in the WTO, "but also by countries interested in advancing the multilateral trade system, trying to unblock the situation."
As part of this scenario, Brazil has jumped on the bandwagon of a South African proposal to create a block of large developing countries including India, Egypt and Nigeria as well, to look after the trade interests of poor countries.
"Our objective is to reach our goals," Foreign Minister Luiz Lampreia said on a conference call with journalists from South Africa.:
