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U.S. is go for EU sanctions
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January 22, 1999: 3:56 p.m. ET
Washington stays course in banana dispute, trade sanctions to kick in Feb. 1
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Washington on Friday said it will move forward with plans to impose trade sanctions against the European Union Feb. 1, despite a last-ditch effort by leaders of that bloc to halt the process.
EU Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan asked the World Trade Organization's General Council to step in and rule on whether the U.S. has a right to impose tariffs against it.
But the U.S. ignored the EU's request, saying it will proceed with plans to notify the WTO on Monday which European products will be subject to 100 percent import tariffs beginning early next month.
Among them are cashmere sweaters, certain cheeses, candles and paper board totaling $520 million worth of trade - the amount that Washington estimates it loses each year from the restrictive EU banana regime.
The EU could still lobby the WTO for arbitration, pushing the sanction deadline back to early March.
The U.S. trade ambassador in Geneva, Rita Hayes, told reporters that an EU request to bring the General Council into the squabble was "appalling" and a "bad faith action."
"We refuse to give up our rights," she said, insisting that the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) meeting next Monday had no alternative under the rules but to give its approval to the U.S. sanctions plan.
The EU action, announced in Brussels on Thursday by Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, was "a cynical proposal that has as its objective the frustration of the (WTO) multilateral dispute settlement system," Hayes declared.
Earlier this month, the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) agreed to an Ecuadorian request to reconvene an expert panel to review the EU's new banana import and marketing regime to decide whether it complied with open trading rules.
At issue are the restrictive banana import laws implemented by the European community in the late 1980s. The EU is the world's largest banana market, estimated to be worth $5 billion a year on the retail level.
The WTO, acting on complaints from the U.S. and a group of Latin American countries, ruled last year that the EU rules violate international trade laws.
Under Europe's current import laws, banana growers in the former African, Caribbean and Pacific colonies of France and the United Kingdom are given easier access to the EU market.
The EU says its new policies, geared to open up banana import laws early next year, comply with WTO orders. The Clinton administration disagrees.
The USTR said the EU's restrictive banana-import laws cost Chiquita (CQB)and Dole (DOL) half of their businesses. 
--from staff and wire reports
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