* New wheat import rules to have minimal price impact
* Egypt aggressively diversifying sources of import
* Egypt's strategic wheat reserves not affected by problems
* French officials deny deal
(Adds French officials)
By Ingrid Melander
ATHENS, July 9 (Reuters) - Russia and France have agreed to inspect wheat shipments before exporting them to Egypt, soothing some of Cairo's concerns over the quality of its grain imports, Egypt's Trade Minister told Reuters on Thursday.
But French officials in Paris later denied there was a deal.
Egypt, one of the world's top wheat importers, has been locked in a row over grain quality since an investigation was ordered into Russian wheat imported by an Egyptian firm in May.
In an effort to fix this, the Trade Ministry announced new wheat import measures on June 23, including a regulation requiring state quality certificates. Major wheat exporters to Egypt did not have mechanisms to issue such documents.
"We signed an agreement together (with Russia that) for further shipments there will be a government agency that is inspecting wheat before shipping," Rachid Mohamed Rachid said in an interview on the sidelines of a business forum in Athens.
"Russians have accepted that and the French have also accepted," he said, adding that Russia had agreed to the inspections when he visited Moscow last month, while the French deal was issued a few weeks ago. [ID:nLN884321]
Officials in France said there was no agreement.
"(French farm office) FranceAgriMer has not been contacted and I am not aware of any request made to the farm ministry. Therefore there could not have been any answer," Patrice Germain, director of the body's international division said.
Another official at the farm ministry, who declined to be named, also said there had not been any such demand from Egypt and stressed that there was no system in place to grant official quality certificates apart from the existing phytosanitary ones.
DIVERSIFICATION
Analysts have said that the tough new regulations to ensure the quality of wheat imports have raised the bar so high that it risked deterring some key suppliers. [ID:nLP614550]
But Rachid said he was confident the system would work, and hoped the measures, which also include doubling financial sureties for cargo inspectors, would not lead to a price rise.
"We understand that some of these measures will have a certain level of cost but they are very minimal," he said.
Egypt relies on foreign supplies of wheat for about half its needs. Disruptions to the supply of subsidised bread last year, a result of surging world grain prices, led to sometimes violent protests in the North African country of 77 million people.
Rachid said, however, that strategic wheat reserves have not been affected by recent problems. "We have not stopped buying, we have not stopped shipping," he said.
Rachid said he was concerned that a global food crisis could erupt again in the coming years, saying major food importers like Egypt needed to focus on ensuring security of supply through diversifying supplier countries.
"Since last year we have been aggressive in diversification," he said, adding that Egypt had reopened the French market and was also working with Kazakhstan, a country from which it had not been buying before.
For a factbox on Egypt's new wheat import measures click on [ID:nLO887002]
For a timeline on Egypt-Russia dispute over wheat click on [ID:nLM21419]
(Additional reporting by Maha El Dahan in Cairo and Valerie Parent in Paris; Editing by Peter Blackburn)