Trade talks to continue

Press, 21 March 1983, Page 9

Trade talks to continue

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States and the European Economic Community have agreed to keep trying to prevent a trade war in agricultural products.

A joint statement issued in Washington at the end of high-level talks said: “A common desire emerged to try and find accommodations to our problems within existing systems on both sides ... the constructive spirit in which (the discussions) have been held seems to us a good basis for further work.”

American and European officials said that they had agreed to withhold details of the secret talks, conducted at the isolated Wye Plantation in Maryland, 80km outside Washington. But they had decided that enough progress had been made to warrant another round of detailed consultations in the next few weeks. The two sides have accused each other of stealing each other’s traditional markets by selling off their vast surpluses of subsidised farm produce at less than the market price.