* EU gave assurances to India in generics row
* Indian generics industry crucial to public health
GENEVA, Oct 20 (Reuters) - India believes a row with the European Union over seizures of generic drugs will be settled without litigation, Trade Minister Anand Sharma said on Wednesday.
The comments suggest the two trading giants will not allow the dispute to undermine their current efforts to conclude a free-trade agreement.
Sharma said that senior EU officials had told him that Brussels accepted the generic drugs had been seized because customs officers had misinterpreted the rules and that the rules in question would be amended in any case.
"I have every reason to believe that the assurances given at the highest level will be implemented and once that happens that issue will be resolved," Sharma told a news conference.
The dispute arose from the seizure by Dutch customs in December 2008 of a blood pressure drug in transit from India to Brazil. [ID:nLDE64B1O6]
India subsequently launched a formal dispute at the World Trade Organization with the EU, but has so far refrained from escalating the row by asking the WTO to rule on the case.
The seizure led health activists to argue that the EU and other rich countries were attacking generic drug production in developing countries under the guise of pursuing counterfeits in order to bolster the intellectual property rights of drugs companies at the expense of poor people's access to medicine.
But Sharma said that India's generics industry had made a huge contribution to public health worldwide and India would not discuss anything in the negotiations with Brussels for a trade pact that would jeopardise health or undermine the industry.
"It is very clear that the generics ensured availability at affordable prices of these medicines to poor patients in poor countries, breaking the suffocating stranglehold of the multinational companies," he said. (Reporting by Jonathan Lynn; Editing by Charles Dick)