Protecting Your Interests

PARIS (AFX) - France has ruled out lifting its embargo on imports ofBritish beef products "for the moment", agriculture minister Herve Gaymard said.

France has maintained its embargo, sparked by fears of mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy - since March 1996.

"It is out of the question for the time being that the embargo on British beef be lifted," Gaymard said at his first news conference since his appointment to the new government of president Jacques Chirac.

In December last year the European Court of Justice ordered France to lift the embargo, but the government has so far refused.