LONDON: President Bush launched a legal challenge at the World Trade Organization on Tuesday, to force Europe to accept imports of American genetically modified crops.

Raising fears of a full-scale trans-Atlantic trade war, Washington described Europe’s five-year-old ban on GM imports as unscientific and a violation of WTO rules. “People around the world have been eating biotech food for years,” said Robert Zoellick, America’s leading trade negotiator. “Biotech food helps nourish the world’s hungry population.”

Two weeks ago Brussels upped the stakes in a separate trans- Atlantic dispute over tax breaks for some of America’s largest exporters.

Europe’s chief trade negotiator, Pascal Lamy, has given Washington until September to change its laws or face a $4bn sanctions bill authorised by the WTO.

EU officials described the challenge as “legally unwarranted, economically unfounded and politically unhelpful”, and accused the US of bringing the case against Europe to put pressure on other countries which are also introducing curbs on GM imports.

“The European commission finds it unacceptable that such legitimate concerns are used by the US against the EU policy on GM food,” officials said.

More than 70 per cent of US soybeans and one-third of the American corn crop come from biotech seeds. European officials deny that there is a moratorium on GM imports, but several member states led by France have blocked all applications since 1998. The case is likely to inflame opinion among environmental lobbyists and anti-globalization protesters ahead of a meeting of trade ministers in Cancun, Mexico, in September.

Greens accused the US of bowing to pressure from its powerful biotech lobby.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.