U.S. WHEAT BONUS TO SOVIET CALLED DORMANT

  The U.S. Agriculture Department is not
  actively considering offering subsidized wheat to the Soviet
  Union under the export enhancement program (EEP), senior USDA
  officials said.
      However, grain trade analysts said the proposal has not
  been ruled out and that an offer might be made, though not in
  the very near future.
      "The grain companies are trying to get this fired up again,"
  an aide to Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng said. "But there
  just isn't much talk about it, informally or formally."
      Most analysts interviewed by Reuters were more confident
  than USDA officials that bonus wheat would be offered to the
  Soviets, even though U.S. officials did not make such an offer
  when they held grain talks with Soviet counterparts earlier
  this week.
      But administration and private sources agreed that if the
  Reagan administration did decide to offer subsidized wheat to
  Moscow, it could take several months.
      "I just don't see any proposal like that sailing through any
  interagency process," the aide to Lyng said.
      "An export enhancement offer is not consummated overnight,"
  said one former USDA official, who noted that the
  administration took three months to decide in favor of selling
  China wheat under the subsidy program.
      An official representing a large grain trade company said
  deliberations within USDA might be nudged along by members of
  Congress, a number of whom urged USDA this week to make a wheat
  subsidy offer to the Soviets.
      But Lyng's aide said that during a day-long visit to
  Capitol Hill yesterday, House members did not press the
  secretary on the subsidy question a single time.
      The administration's interagency trade policy review group,
  comprised of subcabinet-level officials, has not been asked to
  clear a request to offer Moscow wheat under the EEP, officials
  at the U.S. Trade Representative's Office said.
      In their talks this week, the two sides discussed the
  administration's previous EEP offer but did not talk about any
  new initiative. One USDA official who took part in the
  consultations this week described them as an exchange of "calm,
  basic, factual economics."
      Another USDA official said there was "not even an informal
  suggestion or hint" that the Soviets would live up to their
  pledge to buy four mln tonnes of wheat this year if they were
  granted more favorable terms.
      USDA and private sources agreed that consideration of an
  EEP initiative by interagency review groups likely would be
  delayed because of disarray within the White House stemming
  from the Iran arms affair.
  

