FRANCO-GERMAN PARLEY FAILS TO UNBLOCK FARM TALKS
A specially convened Franco-German
meeting in the sidelines of a summit of EC leaders failed to
make any progress over a 1987-88 farm price package that has
deeply split the two former EC allies, diplomats said
    The meeting was attended by farm ministers and foreign
ministers from both countries and by French President Francois
Mitterand, his Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, and by Chancellor
Helmut Kohl of West Germany.
    The stalemate over farm prices is seen as a key to
providing a solution to a long-term settlement of the
Community's worst-ever budget crisis.
    "The Germans clearly do not want to budge," an aide to Chirac
told reporters. He added the French Prime Minister was visibly
angered as he the hour-long meeting.
    Bonn and Paris are diametrically opposed to a proposal for
the Brussels Executive Commission to overhaul radically the
EC's complex "green" currrency system, designed to translate
common EC farm prices into national currencies.
    Paris also supports a move for an oils and fats tax which
West Germany is against, along with Britain, Denmark and the
Netherlands.
    EC farm minsters are due to resume negotiations on the
package, which should have been agreed by an April 1 deadline
tomorrow.
    Diplomats said it had been hoped that the summit could have
injected fresh impetus into those talks.
    The Commission proposed its package to save one billion
dollars on the EC's ever-rising farm budget.
    The summit has been dominated by lengthy talks on moves to
alter the entire system of financing the 12-nation group, and
plugging a 5.7 billion dollar budget shortfall for 1987.
 Reuter
