ICO BOARD PASSES OVER COFFEE QUOTA ISSUE

  Executive board members of the
  International Coffee Organization, ICO, passed over the issue
  of export quota negotiations at its regular meeting here,
  delegates said.
      No move was made to reopen dialogue on export quotas and no
  further discussion on the issue is likely during the three-day
  talks, they said.
      Producer and consumer members of the ICO council failed to
  agree export quota shares in early March.
      Neither Brazil, the largest producer, nor the U.S., the
  largest consumer, are ready to be flexible, delegates said.
      "The situation is unchanged," consumer spokesman Abraham Van
  Overbeeke told reporters. "As long as Brazil sticks to its
  position there will not be quotas -- there is no point in
  meeting."
      At the last council meeting, Brazil wanted to maintain its
  previous quota share of around 30 pct of the market. Consumers
  and a splinter group of eight producers favoured redistribution
  of export shares using "objective criteria," which would likely
  have reduced Brazil's share.
      Brazilian delegate Lindenberg Sette said that, if quota
  negotiations were to resume, the 1.0 mln bag shortfall Brazil
  was willing to give up in early March if the producer proposal
  was accepted would no longer be on the table.
      "As we said from the start...No agreement, no one million
  bags," he told Reuters.
      Shortfalls of 200,000 bags offered by OAMCAF, the African
  and Malagasy Coffee Organization, and 20,000 bags offered by
  Angola, are also no longer valid, delegates said.
      The closest the board came to discussing quotas was a
  briefing by the Guatemalan ICO delegate Rene Montes on a recent
  Latin American producers meeting in Managua, delegates said.
      There, the producers expressed their political will to
  negotiate basic quotas, particularly in the face of the
  damaging drop in coffee prices after the council failed to
  agree quotas, Montes said.
      The ICO board also reviewed export statistics and stock
  verification. They expected talks on stock verification to take
  up the remainder of today's session, delegates said.
  

