Beef Ban Positions Hardening;
EU Says It Will Defy Deadline

GENEVA —(AP)— As the deadline to halt another transatlantic trade dispute grows ever nearer, the United States, Canada and the European Union set out their positions on hormone-treated beef last week. Meanwhile, European officials threatened to ban U.S. imports.

Trade representatives fear the dispute will escalate like the battle over banana imports, which resulted in the United States imposing 100 percent tariffs on selected EU imports after the two trading giants failed to reach agreement at the World Trade Organization.

``We are disappointed to see that once again the EU is failing to meet its WTO obligations,'' U.S. trade ambassador Rita Hayes said at last week's meeting.

The WTO has ruled that the European Union is acting illegally in banning imports of beef treated with certain hormones from countries including the United States and Canada.

The EU claims the hormones could cause cancer, a claim denied by the other countries. The WTO gave the Europeans until May 13 to comply with its rules.

But while the complaining nations say the EU should now lift the ban, the Europeans have launched more studies in an attempt to justify their beef ban.

In an apparent widening of the divide, the European Commission on Wednesday received the go-ahead to ban all imports of American beef as of June 15. The group claimed inspections between May and November 1998 showed residue of hormones in U.S. beef that had been shipped to Western Europe as supposedly hormone-free beef.

EU trade ambassador Roderick Abbott said at the meeting that a risk analysis undertaken by the Europeans might not be complete by the May deadline.

Hayes said that wasn't good enough.

Both the United States and Canada have produced provisional lists of items on which they intend to slap 100 percent tariffs if the EU fails to meet the deadline and the two sides are unable to agree on temporary compensation.

European Union foreign ministers said flatly that they won't comply with the May 13 deadline, set by the World Trade Organization, to end their decade-old ban on imports of beef from the United States and Canada.

German Deputy Foreign Minister Guenter Verheugen said the EU remained of the view that hormone-treated meat was a threat to public health.

He said the European Commission will now negotiate with Washington on how much compensation the United States and Canada can claim to recoup damages resulting from the beef import ban.

The U.S. beef industry claims it costs producers and exporters $250 million a year in lost sales.