Flurry of talks in bid to avert trade war

Date: 11/03/1999

By Peter Chapman

WASHINGTON is spoiling for another trade fight with the EU over the new rules against hush kits.

The regulations, which the US claims would discriminate against many of its older aircraft, come smack in the middle of the bitter transatlantic dispute over the Union's banana import regime.

US Commerce Under Secretary David Aaron jetted into Brussels this week with an aviation industry delegation to warn the EU against enacting the regulations, which would ban foreign-registered planes fitted with hush kits from flying in the Union from 2002.

Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater is also expected in Brussels on 24 March to take Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock to task over the issue five days before a crucial meeting of EU transport ministers.

A decision to press ahead with the ban, originally proposed by Kinnock, was due to be rubber-stamped at a meeting of EU social affairs ministers earlier this week.

But the EU caved in to a demand for a stay of execution from no less than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the threat that the US administration would approve a Congressional bill to ban flights of the Concorde supersonic aircraft into New York's John F. Kennedy airport.