AFX News | July 9, 2003
Farm minister Yoshiyuki Kamei will visit the US and Canada next week to discuss stalled trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a ministry official said. Kamei will fly to Washington on Thursday next week to hold talks with Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, and then US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick on Friday. "We would like to close the gap as much as possible over the farm issue ahead of the WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September," the farm ministry official said. Japan has teamed up with the European Union (EU) against food exporting countries led by the US over ways to reduce tariffs on farm trade, a major obstacle in negotiations on the Cancun meeting. The official said the US is expected to press Japan into dropping a plan to raise beef tariffs based on a 1993 agreement in global trade talks on agriculture. Kamei will then fly to Ottawa on Friday, to meet Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lyle Vanclief on Saturday. The talks there are expected to cover Canadian measures over "mad-cow" disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which has battered the Canadian beef industry. Japan has suspended beef imports from Canada.AFX News:
