GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP): Ecuador forged ahead with its complaint against the European Union's banana import regime Thursday, asking the World Trade Organisation to form a panel to rule on the dispute, trade sources said.
But the EU blocked the request in the meeting of the WTO's Disputes Settlement Body here, effectively delaying the procedure until the DSB's next meeting on March 20, the sources added.
"Ecuador has been seriously affected by the new banana import regime of the EU in place since January 1, 2006," Ecuador's representative Juan Holguin said in a statement to the meeting.
"What we need are clear rules and the elimination of discriminatory and distorting measures of the regime," it added.
Holguin said more than one million Ecuadorians were dependent on banana crops and felt asphyxiated by the EU's 176-euro-per-tonne customs duties, which had added 131 million dollars to their export bill.
Ecuador's complaint is the first to challenge revised EU rules on imports of bananas from outside the African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) zone that took effect last year.
The EU's changed import policy was partly a response to a landmark WTO ruling in favour of several Central American banana exporters in 2001 that had forced Brussels to cut duties.
The fresh step Thursday also signalled that Ecuador and the EU had failed to find a negotiated settlement since the South American country formally lodged its new complaint last November.
The EU expressed its "surprise and disappointment" with Ecuador's move.
Under WTO rules, the defending party may veto the request a ruling by a panel of neutral trade experts, but it automatically goes ahead up to a month later unless the complaint is withdrawn.
Nearly all countries use the delaying tactic.
Holguin said Ecuador was still open to negotiations.
The EU was backed by ACP countries while Ecuador's complaint was largely supported by central American nations, although they did not seek to join the request, trade sources said.
Most nations expressed a strong preference for negotiations, the sources added.
The United States said in a statement: "Ecuadors request today underscores the concerns of Members with the current EU regime, and only affirms the need for the EU to work with interested members to reach a resolution."
Washington sided with the Latin Americans in the original banana dispute until 2001, which implicated several US food giants. | 
