Washington, 09/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - Pascal Lamy met for the first time, on Thursday and Friday, the members of the new Bush Administration, and, notably, Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, the Secretary to the Treasury, Pail O'Neill and Lawrence Lindsey, Economic Advisor to President Bush. In a speech he made before the American Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Mr. Lamy considered that they had to recognise "the need to clean out the barn", and, while noting that the effectiveness American trade policy had "fallen rather low" due to disagreements of these past few years between the Administration and Congress, he hoped that the fact that today both the Congress and the Administration were Republicans it would incite them to find compromises over trade issues. Speaking before the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Robert Zoellick said: if the European Union goes ahead with a plan to implement a new system for bananas, the United States would have no other recourse than to begin rotating the list of products his with US sanction, "carousel sanctions", approved by Congress last year but never implemented by the Clinton Administration. As for the new round of multilateral trade negotiations, Mr. Lamy stressed before the Chamber of Commerce that this round was only possible if the United States "climbs aboard. We need, and not for the first time, the American contribution", he declared.