N.Z. trade access on line at Brussels talks

Press, 25 September 1989, Page 9

N.Z. trade access on line at Brussels talks

PA Wellington The Minister of External Relations and Trade, Mr Moore, was unusually reluctant yesterday to predict the fate of New Zealand’s $BOO million European trade access at a crunch session to be held in Brussels this week. Mr Moore said it was “extremely difficult” to say how the muchpostponed butter and lamb deal would fare at the meeting of the European Community’s 12 farm Ministers starting today. The European Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Ray McSharry, had talked to the Greeks — lastminute opponents to the butter component of the proposal — but it was unclear whether they would change their stance. “There’s still a political component to it all,” Mr Moore said in reference

to the imminent general election in Greece. The Greeks do not export dairy, products, but at the Ministers’ last meeting in July they used their power of veto over New Zealand’s butter quota for Britain to hold up the lamb part of the package. They are unhappy about Europe’s internal sheepmeat reforms, which such countries as France are insisting on linking to the New Zealand deal first negotiated nearly a year ago. Mr Moore failed to get the Greeks to budge when he flew to Athens last month. But when the Ministers approved the New Zealand lamb arrangements in principle in July, he was confident the whole package would sail through in September. Since then he has lobbied the British again, as well as the Greeks. A British diplomat in Wellington has hinted priv-

ately that the muchtravelled Mr Moore could be wearing out his welcome in London. Mr Moore hammered out the package — widely seen to favour New Zealand — with the former European . Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Frans Andriessen, in Brussels last October. It retains the value of butter and lamb exports in spite of sizeable cuts in volume. And New Zealand sheep farmers could even get a $6O million rebate this year through an import tariff cut. With the Ministers’ repeated failure to approve the deal, they have had to invoke temporary emergency measures to extend the 74,500-tonne quota which expired on December 31. The latest roll-over renewal lasts until the end of this month. Beyond that the package threatens to become entangled with the next

Greenpeace affair development, due in late October. The joint French-New Zealand tribunal, set up under the auspices of the United Nations, is expected to make its ruling then on the fate of the two French agents repatriated to Paris before completing their sentences on Hao Atoll in the Pacific. France, a traditional opponent of New Zealand exports, is president of the community until December and is unlikely to take kindly to any suggestion it was not right in sending agents Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur home early. Mr Moore paid tribute to the French position to date but acknowledged that, with the unexpected Greek opposition to New Zealand butter, neither they nor the Irish had needed so far to put up their usual fight.