After meetings in St. Louis this week, the international relief agency CARE said it would not enter a partnership with Monsanto Co. because of worries by farmers in developing countries about Monsanto's genetically engineered crops.

Milo Stanojevich, CARE's chief of staff, said Thursday that it became clear at the end of two days of discussions that brought CARE representatives from around the world that his organization had no interest in an alliance that St. Louis-based Monsanto was suggesting.

The partnership could have meant contributions from Monsant for CARE's projects. The rejection is a setback for Monsanto, which stood to boost its image around the world and perhaps counter suspicion of its genetic technologies that exists widely outside of North America.

But Stanojevich said his organization wasn't persuaded that genetically modified crops would benefit subsistence farmers in developing countries where CARE works. He said the concerns reflected fears by many farmers that they could become dependent on Monsanto if the use of modified seeds becomes dominant in farming.

"There are concerns about the dependence it may create on one company," Stanojevich said, speaking by telephone from Atlanta. "What we said was that at this point, there are open questions about this technology and that we didn't really see how continued bilateral talks would be fruitful."

But he added that CARE hopes to involve other organizations in future discussions about genetic engineering with biotechnology companies.

CARE is one of the world's largest privately run relief and development organizations, operating in 60 countries. It was founded in 1946 as a means to help European survivors of World War II.

Monsanto's chief operating officer, Robert B. Shapiro, had suggested the St. Louis meetings, which drew a 10-member CARE delegation to St. Louis from as far away as Africa and Asia. Shapiro also took part in the discussions.

Monsanto asserts that its technologies can help farmers in developing countries to combat pests and drought, and that farmers will always have a choice in the seeds they plant. Philip Angell, Monsanto's chief of corporate communications, described the meetings with CARE as preliminary. He said that they were not aimed at reaching an agreement on details of a partnership, although such an arrangement might have evolved later. "It was designed to start these two organizations talking to each other," he said.

A partnership, Angell added, "would only have been a decision after dialogue and more back and forth."

Soybeans, corn and other crops modified by genetic engineering are rapidly taking root in the United States. But in most of the rest of the world, it is another story. Europe and many developing countries have erected barriers to commercial production of modified crops. They worry that the safety hasn't been demonstrated over time and that its introduction could disrupt their farm economies and give a few companies too much control over their food and farmers.

Those concerns were voiced loudly last month at U.N. biosafety negotiations in South America. In those talks, the United States, Canada and a handful of allies blocked a drive to establish global regulations governing the trade in modified organisms.

Monsanto tried last year to establish an alliance with another respected international entity - the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank is famous in development and lending circles for "microcredit" - loans to small farmers and the disadvantaged. But after being scolded by advocacy groups around the world, the bank backed out of an arrangement in which Monsanto had promised $150,000 to support its activities.

Exactly what kind of partnership that Monsanto and CARE were talking about was unclear. CARE's Stanojevich said that "philanthropy" by Monsanto had been discussed but that the talks hadn't reached the point of specifics.

CARE has a range of partnerships from licensing agreements in which companies use CARE's name on their products to simpler deals in which companies donate to help with projects in parts of the world where they do business. Two of CARE's best-known partnerships are with Starbucks and Delta Airlines.

The main critic of Monsanto 's attempted alliances is Rural Advancement Foundation International, an advocacy group with offices in the United States and Canada. With its e-mail and fax network, the foundation already had begun to pressure CARE to avoid an alliance with Monsanto.

Rural Advancement's executive director, Pat Mooney, said: "I think some of this is quite genuine on Monsanto's part and that they might have something to help solve problems. The danger in working with farmers who are the poorest of the poor is giving them loans tied to Monsanto's technology."

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