The region signed an FTA with Singapore this month.
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The GCC - a loose political and economic alliance which also includes the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain - has been at odds with the EU in recent weeks over the deal, which has been under discussion for nearly two decades.Īt a meeting of Gulf finance ministers last month, Attiyah said the Gulf would discuss a possible slowdown in free trade talks with foreign partners, pending further studies. There was no immediate response from the European Union. "We will have no objection to resuming talks with them once they are ready to look at all angles of negotiation." "We have suspended talks with the EU," the GCC's Abdul-Rahman al-Attiyah told Reuters by telephone in Muscat, where he is taking part in meetings to prepare for a Gulf Arab leaders summit next week. He called on the GCC to suspend the talks.Īimed at boosting trade and investment between the two blocs, the agreement would make it easier for Gulf Arab states to export products, such as petrochemicals, to Europe, which currently imposes taxes on some imports from the region. MUSCAT: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Saudi Arabia, has suspended talks with the European Union over a free trade agreement, the bloc's secretary-general said on Wednesday.Ī Saudi newspaper last week quoted Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani as saying the EU was seeking to include political clauses in the accord, without elaborating. Gulf Arabs may suspend EU free trade talks Melamine has also been regularly added to animal feed and is thus suspected of being in much of the food that people in China consume. The adulterated milk was then resold to large companies like Sanlu. Arrests have included low-level suppliers suspected of adding the melamine to milk after buying milk from farmers. The discovery of tainted milk in September led to the firing of executives at Sanlu as well as local officials in Hebei Province. Two other large companies, Mengniu and Yili, had products found with melamine, and both have also suffered immense financial losses as a result, but neither has sought bankruptcy. Sanlu is only one of many Chinese dairy companies that were affected by the milk scandal. The bankruptcy order was issued by a court on Wednesday in the city of Shijiazhuang, in Hebei Province, where Sanlu is based. The melamine scandal has become a politically sensitive issue - government officials were involved in covering up the contamination and have close ties to the company - so courts have yet to allow the lawsuits to be heard. It is unclear whether any parents will receive compensation payments during the bankruptcy process. The government has been paying hospital bills for children who fell ill from drinking the tainted products. "This bankruptcy order is not a surprise." "We were aware that Sanlu was in a very difficult situation and faced mounting debts as a result of the melamine contamination crisis," Andrew Ferrier, chief executive of Fonterra, said in the statement. The receiver has six months to sell off the company's assets and pay the creditors, Fonterra said. Six infants died and almost 300,000 fell ill after consuming milk or other dairy products tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical that was added to the products to give them the false appearance of higher protein counts to meet nutrition standards.Ĭhina has grappled with many scandals involving tainted food, but the melamine scare was the worst in years, leading to product recalls around the world.įonterra Group, a New Zealand company that owns 43 percent of Sanlu, released a statement on Wednesday that said a receiver would take over management of Sanlu, one of the largest dairy companies in China. The dairy company, Sanlu Group, has suffered financially since the contamination became public in September and is being sued by parents hoping to be paid as compensation for the illnesses or deaths of their children. Company at core of China's milk scandal is declared bankruptīEIJING: The Chinese dairy company at the center of a tainted milk scandal that shook consumer confidence in China this fall was declared bankrupt by a court on Wednesday, according to a statement by a New Zealand company that owns a substantial portion of the dairy company.
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