ICO BOARD SEEN UNLIKELY TO SET NEW COFFEE TALKS Chances that the International Coffee Organization, ICO, executive board meeting this week will agree to resume negotiations on export quotas soon look remote, ICO delegates and trade sources said. ICO observers doubted Brazil or key consuming countries are ready to give sufficient ground to convince the other side that reopening negotiations again would be worthwhile, they said. ICO talks on quotas last month broke down after eight days when producers and consumers failed to reach agreement. "Since we have not seen signs of change in other positions, it's difficult to see a positive outcome at this stage," Brazilian delegate Lindenberg Sette said. But quotas must be negotiated sometime, he said. The U.S. has indicated it is open to dialogue on quotas but that Brazil must be flexible, rather than refuse to lower its export share as it did in the last negotiations, delegates said. At this week's March 31-April 2 meeting, the 16-member ICO board is scheduled to discuss the current market situation, the reintroduction of quotas, verification of stocks and some administrative matters, according to a draft agenda. The fact that Brazilian Coffee Institute president Jorio Dauster, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Jon Rosenbaum and chief Colombian delegate Jorge Cardenas are not attending the meeting has signalled to most market watchers that it will be a non-event as far as negotiating quotas is concerned. "I would imagine there will be a lot of politicking among producers behind closed doors to work up some kind of proposal by September (the next scheduled council meeting)," Bronwyn Curtis of Landell Mills Commodities Studies said. Traders and delegates said they have seen no sign that a date will be set for an earlier council meeting. If the stalemate continues much longer, analysts expect the coffee agreement will end up operating without quotas for the remainder of its life, to September 30, 1989. When talks broke down, the U.S. and Brazil, the largest coffee consumer and producer respectively, blamed one another for sabotaging negotiations by refusing to compromise. Brazil wanted to maintain the previous export quota shares, under which it was allocated 30 pct of world coffee exports, but consumers and a small group of producers pressed for shares to be redistributed using "objective criteria," which would have threatened Brazil's share. At a recent meeting in Managua of Latin American producers, Costa Rica and Honduras said they were willing to put their objections as members of the group of eight ICO "dissident" producers aside, in order to stem the damaging decline in prices, Nicaraguan External Trade Minister Alejandro Martinez Cuenca told reporters Saturday. He was in London to brief producers on the Managua meeting. However, other producers said they were not aware of this move toward producer solidarity. London coffee prices closed at 1,276 stg a tonne today, down from around 1,550 at the beginning of March.