EC AGREES TRADE DEAL WITH ARGENTINA The European Community (EC) agreed a trade deal with Argentina designed to compensate the country following the entry of Spain and Portugal into the group, EC officials said. Under the deal agreed by EC foreign ministers, Argentina will gain additional trading rights on a series of products including meat, fish and cereals by-products. But ministers failed to agree on new trade deals with Canada and Japan and are due to study these again, the officials said. The deal with Argentina was agreed by a majority of EC states after West Germany withdrew objections to increased quotas for Argentina on high-quality beef. Ireland and France continued to oppose the deal on meat, saying that the main dispute was over sales of cereals substitutes, but they were outvoted by the other states, the officials said. Under the deal, Argentina will benefit from improved quotas on exports of beef to the EC. In particular the quota on high-quality Hilton beef will be raised by 4,500 tonnes to 34,300 tonnes and quotas on frozen boneless beef will be increased by 3,000 tonnes to 53,000 tonnes. Argentina will also benefit from an additional quota of 5,000 tonnes of frozen hake fillets at 10 pct duty and reduced levies on 550,000 tonnes of wheat bran, the officials said. The improved trade terms were offered after Argentina said that Spain and Portugal's entry into the EC affected their exports of cereals substitutes to these two countries. They have been negotiated under the rules of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). But officials said ministers had been unable to resolve Canadian claims that its sales of certain fish to Spain had been affected by the country's EC membership. Officials said the EC had asked GATT to arbitrate on the fish dispute with Canada. Ministers also decided to continue talks with Japan. The EC claims that Spain and Portugal's entry into the group has improved trade conditions for Japan but has been unsatisfied with Japanese offers of compensation. Japan's main offers were to improve inspection systems on citrus fruits to aid EC exports, to improve tariffs for some other farm produce, to increase tariffs for leather footwear and to offer better trade terms for Spain and Portugal. EC External Trade Commissioner Willy De Clercq told journalists: "We maintain our position that the (Japanese) concessions were not enough." "We hope that there will be an improvement," he said.