TALKS FAIL TO END BRAZILIAN SEAMEN'S STRIKE Pay talks aimed at ending a week-old national seamen's strike collapsed today and the strike will continue, a union official said. The walkout by Brazil's 40,000 seamen has idled 160 ships in various ports, Jorge Luis Leao Franco, a senior official of the National Merchant Marine Union, told Reuters. The strikers, who are seeking a 275 pct pay increase, have rejected offers of a 100 pct raise from the state oil company Petrobras and an 80 pct increase from the National Union of Maritime Navigation Companies (Syndarma). Leao Franco said eight hours of talks in Rio de Janeiro with Labor Minister Almir Pazzianotto ended today without resolving the dispute. He said six ships were idle abroad -- in the Netherlands, Spain, Venezuela, France and South Africa. Economic analysts said the strike was of major concern to the government, which has suspended interest payments on part of Brazil's foreign debt following a drastic deterioration in the country's trade balance. The head of the National Merchant Marine Authority, Murilo Rubens Habbema, was quoted today as saying that if the strike continued foreign ships could be authorized to transport Brazilian exports. "Brazil is living through a crisis at the moment and it is not conceivable that exports be hit," he told the Gazeta Mercantil newspaper.