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Kinkel says UK to

pay more indirectly

for BSE

BONN: Germany's Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel told a German magazine on Friday that Britain would have to pay more indirectly toward the cost of compensating British beef farmers because it had received an EU rebate since 1992.

The EU placed a worldwide ban on the export of British beef after scientists said there could be a link between "madcow" disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and its human equivalent Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).

EU officials have proposed tough measures which will probably mean the mass slaughter of at least 700,000 British cattle a year over the next six years to ensure that mad cow disease cannot enter the human food chain.

The EU has agreed to foot 70 percent of the cost of compensating British beef farmers, which could total some 600 million marks a year.

Kinkel said Britain had paid reduced EU contributions since 1992, and that EU compensation for the crisis would be offset against the rebate, according to the report in weekly Focus magazine which was released ahead of publication on Saturday.

"That is what agreements on contributions say: All payments by the community which would further reduce the British net contribution have to be taken into account", the magazine quoted him as saying.

He did not say how much the rebate amounted to.

Kinkel rejected the view that the row over madcow disease might make Britain even more unreceptive to European integration policy. He hoped the BSE crisis would make Britain realise "how much the Europeans are reliant upon one another".-Reuter