Iraq not ready to negotiate new lamb deal

Press, 22 October 1981, Page 3

Iraq not ready to negotiate new lamb deal

PA Wellington Iraq is not in any hurry to negotiate a new lamb deal, according to Mr Bruce Bishop, who has negotiated New Zealand lamb sales to Iraq for the last three years. Mr Bishop, the export sales manager of W. and R. Fletcher, Ltd, said in Wellington yesterday that there was a great deal of frozen lamb in coolstores in Bagdad, which he had just visited for an international trade fair. “They are not releasing it on to the local market. It is

being reserved for the Army,” he said. The Army was not using it, but “the Government will be protecting all the meat supplies in case the Army does want it,” Mr Bishop said. . “Until some glimmer of light is seen in getting some of that lamb to the consumer, I do not see them being in any hurry to negotiate a hew deal,” he said. Last season Iraq bought 30.Q00 tonnes of lamb from New Zealand, worth about $7O million. “Under the present cir-

cumstances and with the present offtake, they would conceivably have enough lamb with the contract we are now supplying to last through much of next year, and so I am not very confident that in the initial round they will even buy lamb,” Mr Bishop said. Asked if there was any indication that Iraq was heeding a suggestion by the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee of an Arab boycott of New Zealand lamb, Mr Bishop said there was “nothing whatsoever in the rumour.”