Latin America's banana-producing countries want to gain "total access" to the European Union (EU) market after the WTO rejected a new EU proposal to impose banana tariffs, Panamanian Trade Minister Alejandro Ferrer said on Monday.

"We are going to analyze scenarios and a common position to meet a new offer the European Union should make," Ferrer told the press after a meeting of regional trade ministers.

Ministers from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, all main banana producers in the world, were attending the meeting in the Panamanian capital.

Latin American growers' hopes have been boosted by a recent WTO verdict which ruled that the EU tariffs failed to comply with world trade rules.

Last Month, the World Trade Organization (WTO), which sets rules for international trade, struck down an EU proposal for a tariff of 187 euros (about 218 US dollars) per ton of exported bananas from Latin America, which would have started on Jan. 1, 2006.

Latin America countries export an annual combined 3.4 million tons of bananas to the 25 states of the EU.

The EU has been struggling to maintain a preferential banana trade deal with the African, Caribbean and Pacific grouping of countries.

The dispute began in the late 1990s when the EU, the United States, which was backing US-based fruit multinationals, and some Latin American countries were locked in a bruising confrontation over the EU's banana barriers.

That battle culminated in a WTO ruling in 2000 that the EU system broke trade rules. Brussels agreed to come up with a new system.

Source: Xinhua