Danes Refused Butter Quota Rise

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30115, 26 April 1963, Page 13

Danes Refused Butter Quota Rise

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, April 24

The Danish Foreign Minister, Mr Per Baekkerup, left London today after trade talks with the British Government had failed.

His talks were mainly concerned with increasing sales of Danish butter and other farm products in Britain, but no major conclusions were reached, a well-informed source said. Further Anglo-Danish exchanges on this question will follow.

“We go back to Copenhagen depressed and disappointed,” Mr Haekkerup said.

This means, says the financial correspondent of “The Times,” that the European Free Trade Association meeting in Lisbon on May 9 will take place in an unusually tense atmosphere. Denmark regards the acceleration of the time limit for cutting industrial tariffs as dependent on some reciprocal treatment for farm products.

Meanwhile British and Danish officials would carry on negotiations on possible tariff reductions.

As Mr Haekkerup left, the Swedish Commerce Minister, Mr Gunnar Lange, arrived from Stockholm for trade talks with the British Government in preparation for the European Free Trade Area meeting.

In Geneva, officials of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade failed once again in devising an agreed new automatic tariff-reducing technique for the Kennedy round. Commenting on the failure of the Geneva talks, the “Glasgow Herald’s” correspondent says: "Apparently the inability to reach agreement is due to continued absence of instructions for delegates of the EE C. The main purpose of the Kennedy round is to ensure a lively flow of trade across the E.E.C. joint outer tariff wall.

“The prevailing opinion now is that until the question of the E.E.C.’s common agricultural policy is settled to France’s satisfaction at the planned de Gaulle-Adenauer meeting in June, there is no hope of reaching agreement, even in principle, on any new G.A.T.T. tariff-reducing techniques.

“This means that the G.A.T.T. Ministerial meeting next month is unlikely to achieve much, if anything. There remains a possibility of the tariff-reducing formula being worked out at a lower level before the beginning of next year, when the Kennedy round is expected to start.”

“One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot but feel regret that 20 or 30 years of life maybe have been spent without the least knowledge of him.”—Charles Dudley Warner,