European Union-Latest on US beef imports.

EUROPEAN UNION.

— Washington agreed Wednesday to postpone for two weeks introducing additional duties on a number of EU products in a long-running row over beef hormones, the European Commission said Wednesday.

The new duties, including a crippling 300-percent import duty on France ’s Roquefort cheese, were supposed to take effect on Thursday, but the two sides agreed instead to seek a negotiated solution.

"We have agreed today that our senior officials will hold further talks with a view to finding a negotiated solution to the long-running dispute," EU trade chief Catherine Ashton said after a phone call with US counterpart Ron Kirk.

"We are both aware that this is a difficult issue that affects businesses and consumers in both the European Union and the United States ," she said in a statement.

"We want to overcome those difficulties, and we believe that a solution is within reach that will benefit both sides."

In the final days of George W. Bush’s presidency, Washington decided to impose the new tariffs on European products in retaliation for an EU ban on US hormone-treated beef.

The EU has had a ban on hormone-treated beef in place since the early 1980s which has long been a source of trade disputes with partners such as the United States and Canada .

The World Trade Organization in 1998 ruled that the EU had violated trade rules by banning the hormone-treated beef, thereby allowing the United States and Canada to impose trade sanctions on the bloc.

But the EU argued in 2003 that it had scientific grounds for the ban, making it valid under trade rules. That argument was rejected by the United States and Canada and the two countries maintained trade sanctions against the bloc.