PM to hold talks with US Vice-President

Prime Minister John Key has brought forward his arrival in Washington today to make an unscheduled meeting with Vice-President Joe Biden at the White House about midnight tonight (NZ time).

Mr Key is in Washington with 40 other invited leaders for President Barack Obama's nuclear security summit. But he is expected to use what opportunities he can, including his meeting with Mr Biden, to promote New Zealand's number one issue with Washington - trade.

Mr Key is expected to politely rubbish the claims US senators made about the effects of the New Zealand dairy industry in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations which began last month.

Trade Negotiations Minister Tim Groser described the claims - raised by the senators in a letter to US Trade Representative Ron Kirk - as "a load of old cobblers".

Mr Key will also have a chance to speak privately to Mr Obama during the two-day summit, which begins tomorrow morning (NZ time).

The PM was sounded out about a formal bilateral meeting with Mr Obama on the sidelines of the summit.

But officials believed that might weaken the imperative for a separate visit by Mr Key to the White House later in the year when New Zealand's messages may get a more receptive hearing.

A separate trip would also give Mr Key a chance to engage personally with some of the senators who have been heavily lobbied by elements of the US dairy industry, and to meet the Trade Representative Kirk.

The meeting with Mr Biden is thought to be a formality in that each head of state or Government could expect to meet either him or Mr Key books a date with Obama.

Mr Key was previously due to arrive in Washington at the same time as the Biden meeting will take place.

Mr Obama will hold meetings with the leaders of China, India, Pakistan, Germany, South Africa, Nigeria, Malaysia, Jordan, Ukraine, Armenia and Kazakhstan.

One of the most important meetings of Mr Key's visit, his first to Washington as Prime Minister, will come early tomorrow with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a few hours after meeting Mr Biden.

The pair will have a private lunch at the New Zealand Embassy where the TPP talks and the senators' letter is expected to be discussed.

Almost a third of the Senate put their names to the letter, which suggested that including the NZ dairy industry in the deal would cost the US dairy sector US$20 billion in the first 10 years and that the NZ industry was anti-competitive and wielded great control over world dairy markets.

Mr Groser told the Herald he had seen the same argument for 30 years as a trade negotiator.

"The fundamental reason it doesn't go away is, when you are trying to justify protectionist measures against New Zealand, you can't actually politically say, 'We don't want to do it because they are more competitive than us'."

Mr Groser said the Government needed to keep pushing out the same message - "that this is a load of old cobblers".

"It will never go away because their political need to find respectable arguments will never go away."

Mr Vilsack visited New Zealand several times when he was Governor of Iowa and co-chaired the New Zealand-United States Partnership forum in Auckland with former Prime Minister Jim Bolger.

On a positive note, Mr Key will talk about the progress of the jointly backed and funded Global Research Alliance on agricultural greenhouse gas, which finished its first meeting last week in New Zealand.

Russia is the latest country to sign up to it.