Allan Tracy, president of US Wheat Associates, said Australian Wheat Boardshould be banned until Australia investigates a United Nations report that Australian Wheat Boardwas involved in kickbacks in wheat sales to the former regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
In response to the US lobby group, Australian Wheat Board said the move was just another attack on its position as Australia's monopoly wheat exporter. "It's predictable," AWB spokesman Peter McBride, "The US Wheat Associates are fundamentally opposed to the single desk wheat marketing system."
AWV operates a government-granted monopoly on the export of bulk wheat on behalf of 35,000 wheat growers.
The US industry describes the Australian system as anti-competitive.
Australian Wheat Board says unsubsidised Australian wheat competes freely on world markets with subsidised wheat from the United States and elsewhere.
Australian Wheat Board is one of the biggest traders of wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade and other US futures markets and a suspension could disrupt the market.
On an average day AWB can hedge up to 300,000 tonnes of wheat from the national export pool in the US. The recent UN report by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Valqua said AWB had been involved in illegal kickbacks of up to $221 million to a Jordanian trucking company to transport wheat within Iraq.
Australian Wheat Board has said it knew nothing of any kickbacks. The Valqua report said there was no evidence that Australian Wheat Board was knowingly involved in kickbacks, but said it should have known.
Australian Prime Minister Michael Howard called for an inquiry into the affair last week.
Australian Wheat Board and US wheat exporters are fierce competitors for world markets, particularly in Iraq which Australia dominated when the Saddam government stopped buying US wheat in the 1990s in retaliation for the first Gulf War.
After the toppling of Saddam in 2003, US exporters have been regaining lost ground, most recently with a reported sale of one million tonnes. US Wheat Associates was the first to make allegations of kickbacks to Saddam back in 2003, long before the UN investigated whether the oil-for-food scheme had been breached.
Australian Wheat Board has denied all charges and has said that the UN approved all of its contracts. AWB normally exports around 17 million tonnes of wheat a year close to 17 percent of world trade from an annual crop of 22-23 million tonnes.