Greek butter support?

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 2

Greek butter support?

NZPA staff correspondent London The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Overseas Trade, Mr Cooper, will fly to Rome today to put New Zealand's case on the 1983 butter quotas after getting a sympathetic hearing from Greek Ministers. He will see the Italian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Mario Fioret, who is in charge of E.E.C. affairs. Mr Cooper, who will visit 10 E.E.C. capitals in as many days, began his talks in Athens on Monday. His meetings with the Greek Foreign Minister, Mr loannis Charalambopoulos, and the Agriculture Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, were “quite good,” he said.

“We believe we have Greek support for 89,000

tonnes,” he told NZPA from Athens. That is the quota proposed by the E.E.C. commission for 1983, 1000 tonnes less than New Zealand had hoped for, but more than countries such as France. Ireland, and Denmark would like.

The collapse of Mr Anker Joergensen’s Social Democrat Government in Copenhagen last week has raised uncertainty over the butter negotiations. But the word from Denmark was that it was “business as usual,” with the Agricultural Minister, Mr Bjorn Westh, who recently visited New Zealand, carrying on as caretaker Minister. Mr Westh, who Mr Cooper will meet next week, is chairman of the E.E.C. Agricultural Council during the six-month Danish presidency of the Community. The Ministers should de-

cide on the butter quota at their next meeting, on September 20, to meet the October 1 deadline. However, Mr Westh said in Wellington that he did not expect a decision until October.