TRADE

E.U. TO PROPOSE THE RELEASE OF CHINESE GARMENTS

The European Union will tomorrow put proposals to member states for the release of millions of Chinese garments stacked up at customs warehouses since the E.U. imposed import limits in June, E.U. Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said.

If the proposals are accepted, then about 70 million sweaters, trousers, and bras could be released by mid-September, Mr. Mandelson said in a British Broadcasting Corporation interview. Designed to protect European manufacturers from cheaper Chinese clothing, the quotas have led European retailers to complain they may have to find higher-cost suppliers in other parts of Asia or Eastern Europe to avoid shortages. “I hope that member states will cooperate with me,” Mr. Mandelson said. “If they cooperate, I believe we’ll be able to unblock all the goods currently held at customs by the middle of September.”

Talks with China on easing this year’s limits will resume in Beijing today after the sides failed to reach a conclusion yesterday, a spokesman for the E.U. negotiators, Michael Jennings, said in a telephone interview. China, the world’s largest textile exporter, agreed on June 10 to limit annual export growth of 10 categories of textiles to the E.U. to between 8% and 12.5% through 2007.The limits on goods from T-shirts to trousers were aimed at shielding European producers from cut-price imports after the end of a global quota system on January 1.

– Bloomberg News

DEFENSE

VOCAL CRITIC OF PENTAGON HALLIBURTON CONTRACTS IS REMOVED

WASHINGTON – A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon’s decision to give Halliburton a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday. Lieutenant General Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Bunnatine Greenhouse last month that she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews. Ms. Greenhouse’s attorney, Michael Kohn, appealed the decision on Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the demotion until a “sufficient record” was available to address her allegations. The Army said last October that it would refer her complaints to the Defense Department’s inspector general. The failure to abide by the agreement and the circumstances of the removal “are the hallmark of illegal retaliation,” Mr. Kohn wrote to Mr. Rumsfeld. He said the review Lieutenant General Strock cited to justify his action “was conducted by the very subjects” of Ms. Greenhouse’s allegations, including the general.

– The Washington Post