European Union envoys are meeting US officials today in a bid to end the row between the two trading blocs over President Mr George W, Bush's new steel tariffs.
But diplomats said there was no sign either side was ready to back down from their positions. "Don't expect much to come of this," said one EU diplomat as he went into the session at the EU mission to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva.
US sources said yesterday US assistant trade representative for industry Ms Florizell Liser would stick to the administration's position that the tariffs - up to 30 per cent on a range of steel products for three years - were legal under WTO rules and that she would reject EU requests for compensation.
Later in the day she is due to meet with representatives from Brazil and New Zealand for talks under the WTO's Safeguards Agreement, invoked by Mr Bush as justification for the tariffs.
The 1994 agreement allows countries facing a surge of legal imports putting the survival of a domestic industry under threat to impose temporary tariffs to give the industry time to recover.
But the EU - backed by Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and China - says there has been no recent surge of imports into the United States and that the measures are a breach of WTO rules.
It has been used several times by the United States over the past six years, but WTO dispute panels requested by other countries have consistently found the way Washington applies them to be illegal.