DAKAR - Visiting US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick urged African cotton-growing countries to develop integrated textile production at home as a means of boosting competitiveness.

Under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the US law on spurring profitable trade for African businesses by eliminating customs duties.

"It will be increasingly important for Africa to have integrated (textile) production so as to reduce the costs," Zoellick said.

"It is important for Africa to develop fabric production in order to compete in the world market," he said, noting for example that Mali exports yarn to Mauritius to be manufactured into textiles.

"AGOA is an advantage for African countries," Zoellick said, while noting that "other countries still are very efficient producers."

Speaking alongside his Senegalese counterpart Mamadou Diop Decroix, he noted that a 50-year-old system of tariffs will end on January 1, when quotas will be lifted on trade in textile products.

Zoellick also announced that a conference on biotechnology would be held in Mali in July 2005.

"It's my understanding that it will focused mostly on cotton," said Zoellick, who was winding up a two-day visit to Senegal at the start of a five-country African tour.

West African countries blame US subsidies for pricing their impoverished cotton industry, a pillar of many of their economies, out of world markets.

African cotton-producing nations earlier this year reached an agreement with Washington to set up a special negotiating subcommittee on cotton on the sidelines of global talks on liberalising agricultural trade.

Zoellick's week-long tour, which will also take him to Benin, Mali, Namibia and Lesotho, is aimed at following up on the Doha round of trade liberalization talks of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

On Monday, the US official met his European Commission counterpart Peter Mandelson for the first time, in Paris, to discuss various contentious trade issues between Washington and Brussels.

The WTO ruled in September that US cotton subsidies were illicit under global trade rules, following a complaint filed by Brazil. The United States has appealed against the ruling. -AFP