REUTER 14/3/95

By Janet McEvoy

BRUSSELS European Commissioner Emma Bonino returned from an aid mission to ethnically troubled Rwanda and Burundi on Tuesday to the task of resolving an acrimonious fishing row between the European Union and Canada.

She said her visit to the two East African countries where millions of refugees face starvation and ethnic tensions threaten a new explosion of genocide had put the fishing dispute in perspective.

"I think that sometimes we lose our priorities," Bonino told Reuters in an interview.

The 47 year old Italian, the member of the EU executive responsible for both fisheries and humanitarian aid, added: "Maybe I was shocked coming back from such a situation. It seems that rich countries have lost some values, some priorities."

Shortly after touching down in Brussels from her four day mission, Bonino told a news conference she was ready to open talks with Canada as early as Wednesday if a detained Spanish trawler and its captain were released.

A former member of Italy's Radical party and a passionate campaigner for women's rights and the pro abortion lobby, she won over French fishermen usually hostile to grey suited EU officialdom with her down to earth understanding of their problems during a recent visit to France.

She spent her first weekend as a European commissioner on a trip to the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and visited East Africa to assess the work of the EU's humanitarian aid office there.

Rwanda and Burundi receive the lion's share of aid from the EU, the world's largest donor, closely followed by former Yugoslavia.

The auburn haired commissioner intends fishing disputes permitting to go on one aid mission a month as part of her hands on approach.

"I am such a person who understands a lot better by being in the field than reading 3,000 pages of a report," she said in the interview. She next plans to visit the Caucasus.

The fishing row has prompted the EU to call off official meetings with Ottawa and Spain to impose visas for Canadian vistors.

It escalated last Thursday when Canada seized the Spanish trawler Estai in international waters off the Newfoundland coast on charges of over fishing.

Canadian gunboats fired shots across the Estai's bow as it was fishing for Greenland halibut, also known as turbot.

Spain immediately sent a warship to the area an action Bonino regretted.

"I did not think it was a good idea for the Spanish to send a warship," she told the news conference.