BC FISH CANADA / Europe and Canada no closer to resolving fish war (Updates with new comments from EU, Canadian ministers)

By Tanya Willmer

ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland The European Union on Monday suspended negotations with Canada to resolve their bitter dispute over fishing rights in the North Atlantic, but Canada's top fisheries official said his country remains willing to talk.

The two sides avoided another confrontation on the high seas, but the war of words continued.

Late on Monday, Greenpeace said that radio communications it had intercepted from Spanish fishing vessels in the area indicated that they were moving back into one area of the disputed Grand Banks fishing grounds. The environmental group has chartered a ship to monitor the fishing.

European Fisheries Commissioner Emma Bonino said in New York, where she was attending a United Nations conference on fishing, that the 15 member European Union had unanimously decided to suspend negotiations with Canada until it stops harassing EU fishing vessels.

But Canadian Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin said Canada is still willing to talk. "We remain ready to negotiate," he told Canadian Broadcasting Corp. television from New York.

Tensions flared after Canadian authorities cut the nets of a Spanish trawler on Sunday and attempted to board two others in a high speed chase through a disputed fishing zone outside its 200 nautical mile limit.

The two sides traded accusations at the U.N. conference where Canada's Tobin said Spanish fishing was out of control, threatening to destroy the last of the turbot which spends parts of its life on both sides of the international boundary crossing the Grand Banks of the North Atlantic.

The EU's Bonino, however, denounced the Canadian action and said Ottawa has no right to police oceans outside its jurisdiction.

"I wish to express my personal surprise and distress at the continued inability of a country like Canada to abide by the rule of law," she said at a news conference in New York.

"What is happening is, in my opinion, inexcusable. The Grand Banks have been turned into some sort of Far West, with one state acting as the only self appointed lawmaker, sheriff and judge," she said.

Tobin said Canada will continue to enforce a unilateral moratorium on fishing for turbot, also known as Greenland halibut, on the Grand Banks to prevent a repetition of the collapse of the cod fishery, which has thrown 40,000 fishermen on Canada's Atlantic Coast out of work.

"We are not interested in a shooting contest. We're just taking the conservation measures that are required. We're using the amount of force required to protect the stock."

Tobin said Spanish trawlers had grouped in the disputed area of the Grand Banks around the Spanish patrol vessel Vigia, which is armed with a machinegun. "At the last report I had, there was quite thick fog but there was no fishing activity," he said.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation reported last year that 70 percent of worldwide fish stocks are now either fully exploited, overfished, depleted or rebuilding from previous overfishing.

The fish fight between Canada and Europe flared after Canada seized the Spanish factory trawler Estai in international waters March 9.