BRUSSELS, Belgium - Biotechnology was one of the hot topics when European Commission President Romano Prodi and U.S. President Bill Clinton discussed the agenda recently in Washington for the next round of global trade talks.

Even if overall prospects for a coordinated approach to the upcoming Seattle launch of the World Trade Organization talks this month are not bright, there was some progress on biotechnology.

The two sides agreed to set up a committee with farmers, scientists and other interested parties to offer worried consumers advice about genetically modified foods. The new working group, they said after their talks, will deal with the fears some people have over the safety and environmental dimensions of foods made with biotechnology. The plan is that this advisory panel will operate until the European Union has completed the setting up of its recently proposed independent food regulatory agency modeled on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Meanwhile, members of the temporary panel could include top world scientists as well as representatives of consumer, farm and possibly religious groups to "fill the gap" until an independent food agency is established, a spokesman for Prodi said.

The proposal was welcomed in the U.S., which says the EU's decisions on genetically modified crops and other biotechnology trade issues have been guided more by politics than science. In July, the EU in effect halted its approval process for the release of genetically modified crops until a revamped assessment procedure is up and running. Pessimistic estimates suggest this could mean a delay until 2002.