Farm ministers from sugar- producing developing countries and their European Union (EU) counterparts stuck to their positions on the reform of the EU's sugar market regime at the two-day meeting starting Monday in Brussels.

Both sides remain dissident over the scope and speed of the reform aiming to cut guaranteed sugar prices.

The Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) and least-developed (LDC) countries called for the proposed price cuts for sugar to be gentler and phased in more gradually.

They asked the EU for the price of sugar to be cut by 15 to 20 percent, rather than the proposed 39 percent.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, meanwhile, insisted that with lower price cuts, "the necessary restructuring of the Community supply would be impeded and imports would grow too fast" and "the market would collapse with the building-up stocks and declining prices."

But the Commissioner said there will be "only a marginal drop in prices in the first year for ACPs and LDCs" so as to cushion the blow of the reform.

This will not be the case for EU sugar beet growers, whose net prices will be reduced by 20 percent in 2006.

EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel also announced an EU Action Plan for the ACPs and LDCs over the next eight years, to the tune of 40 million euros (48.8 million dollars) for the first year of the reform.

He insisted that the sum is "not compensation but restructuring aid for the economies of the ACP-LDCs."

But Mauritian Minister Arvin Boolel, representing the ACP countries, said the EU's sugar reform as it stands "will spell disaster and impending doom for small and landlocked economies."

"We are not against the reform", he said, "but we want a fair and just reform."

Source: Xinhua