The United States, the world's largest coffee importer, has rejoined the International Coffee Organization in a move meant to help coffee growers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Saturday. "The International Coffee Organization has undertaken impressive reforms in recent years to strengthen its market orientation, build programs to help coffee farmers improve quality, efficiency and access to markets, and streamline the global coffee trade," Rice said in a statement released in Washington. Advocates for coffee-growing developing countries have lobbied for renewed U.S. membership in the ICO, the main governmental forum for the global coffee industry, as a step toward reviving long-depressed prices received by growers. The United States quit the group in 1993, saying it wanted to artificially set prices through quotas. But the group has changed its focus since then, a State Department official said in September, when U.S. intentions to rejoin were announced. --More 2354 Local Time 2054 GMT
