Japan's farm minister to visit US, Canada to discuss WTO/trade row

TOKYO, July 9 (AFP) - Japan's farm minister Yoshiyuki Kamei will visit the United States and Canada next week to discuss stalled trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a ministry official said Wednesday.

Kamei, who is to leave Tokyo for Washington Thursday next week, will hold talks with Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman on Thursday and US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick on Friday.

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"We would like to close the gap as much as possible over the farm issue ahead of the WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September," the farm ministry official said.

Japan has teamed up with the European Union (EU) against food exporting countries led by the United States over ways to reduce tariffs on farm trade, a major obstacle in negotiations on the Cancun meeting.

On Tuesday, Kamei and EU agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler held a telephone conversation and agreed to work together in the WTO negotiations.

During the planned meetings in Washington, the United States is expected to press Japan to drop a plan to raise beef tariffs based on a 1993 agreement in global trade talks on agriculture, the official said.

"The beef tariff issue is not on the agenda but it is very likely that the US side will urge us to abandon the planned hike," he said.

Tokyo plans to raise the beef tariff to 50 percent from the current 38.5 percent in response to a surge in beef imports, which resulted from last year's plunge in beef consumption after Japan's first case of mad cow disease was discovered.

US and other beef exporters oppose the hike, saying the import surge did not stem from any export drive targetting domestic cattle breeders in Japan.

Kamei is to fly to Ottawa from Washington on Friday next week to meet Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lyle Vanclief on Saturday.

The Japan-Canada talks are expected to cover Canadian measures over "mad-cow" disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as BSE, which has battered the Canadian beef industry.

Japan has suspended beef imports from Canada. On May 20, a Black Angus cow, which had been slaughtered in Alberta in January, was confirmed to have mad cow disease.

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