The club, formally known as the Global Alliance for Sugar Trade Reform, also includes India, the Philippines, South Africa, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras.

Also represented are major sugar users, including Coca-Cola Co, confectioners, and cane refiners. US interests are represented through the Coalition for Sugar Reform, which comprises a diverse range of users and refiners which Australian sugar sources say has tacit backing from the US administration.

Members of the club will meet in Seattle next Sunday to fire first shots in a bid to stamp out market corruption in the sugar trade through negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The club will target reform in the US and European Union.

``The bottom line is that the corrupt world market has to be addressed and if we don't do it, no one will do it for us,'' general manager of Australia's Canegrowers, Ian Ballantyne said.

The US public was cross-subsidising US sugar producers by US$1.5 billion a year, Ballantyne said. ``It's just crazy stuff.''

Reform to knock out inefficient producers in US, EU, Japan the sugar club's armament is being buttressed by projections of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) that a free world market for sugar would increase the depressed price of raw sugar by 24 per cent or more.This would occur through sugar output from inefficient producing areas in the world being knocked out or reduced because of elimination of subsidies and other support schemes.

The three main producers involved are the US, which produces more than three million tonnes a year of sugar from cane and about four million tonnes from beet, the EU which produces about 17.5 million tonnes a year from beet, and Japan, which produces about 7,00,000 tonnes a year from beet. ``Producers and users throughout the world stand to benefit from sugar trade liberalisation through substantially improved world sugar prices, which translates to increased returns to Australian sugar producers,'' the chairman of Australia's national raw sugar exporter Queensland Sugar Corp (QSC) said on Tuesday.

``A key factor in achieving this will be Australia's efforts to convince the WTO ministers to implement reforms which open up the highly subsidised and tariff protected markets of the US, EU and Japan,'' QSC chairman Bruce Vaughan said.

Australia's delegation to the first sugar club talks, being held before the WTO ministerial meetings in Seattle at the end of this month, will include trade minister Mark Vaile and industry representatives.

Sugar Club said no cartel. Vaughan said the Australian sugar industry had been working with like minded people around the world for some time to prepare a a strong base for Seattle.

While the GATT Uruguay Round of 1986-1994 produced reform for some agricultural commodities, sugar was left untouched. This leaves it as a key focus for reform in coming WTO talks.

``The Australian sugar industry ... will be pushing the WTO to implement reforms on a commodity- by- commodity basis to ensure sugar does not escape reform again,'' Vaughan said. The first sugar club meeting will take place next Sunday. A communique and details of Abare's study, produced in association with Sparks Cos Inc of the US will be released on Monday.

``The study is expected to contain damning evidence of the cost of subsidies to consumers in countries where the sugar trade has not been liberalised,'' Vaughan said. Ballantyne said the alliance was in no way a cartel. ``This will be a long, slow process but for the first time we are seeing fractures, particularly in the US regime,'' he said.

``If the US regime does come unstuck it will only be a matter of time before we start seeing the subsidisation in Europe and other areas crumble as well,''