will sit down at the Cafe de Paris in Monte-Carlo this week at their annual gathering with one key aim in mind -- rate rises.

Most reinsurers have not seen pure underwriting profits since 1995, and like the insurers they insure have been propping up earnings with reserve releases and investment income.

Hence this year's gathering, where the reinsurers start to hammer out terms for next year's renewal premiums, may hear some tough talking that will belie the relaxed atmosphere of Monaco's second largest event after the Grand Prix.

The steady increase in the cost of earthquakes, hurricanes and oil refinery fires, of which they pay a significant percentage, means reinsurers need to rise their rates.

Norbert Strohschen, chief of German reinsurer Gerling Global Re said: "Rates have reached the bottom in catastrophe business -- from next year onwards, they will rise again.'' But industry analysts are not so sure. There is still too much reinsurance capacity and tough competition is keeping prices low, they say.

Tom Bennett at Paribas said primary insurers probably will not see an upturn until at least 2001, and reinsurers, especially in London, are too optimistic.

"They see one price go up and think whole market is turning,'' he said.

This is despite Australian reinsurers GIO and New Cap Re dropping out of the market, along with a number of London companies.

As a result, premiums insurers pay to reinsurers next year is likely to stay at about $100 billion, some 15 percent of the world's total non-life market.

Mike Schell, managing director of US reinsurer St Paul Re's London operation, said there were signs of rate rises in some primary lines of business, such as UK motor and property and international satellite insurance, but the prospect for overall increases remained patchy.

"Other areas have seen a lot of pain -- but at least this year the talk should not be about how much the rates are going down,'' he said.

Primary rates have tumbled since their peak in 1995, but exposures have increased, and both insurers and reinsurers have effectively been getting less money for more risk.

Bennett said the effect of this has been hidden for the past few years as losses have been light, but if scientists' predictions are correct, natural catastrophes will soon revert to the high level of the early 1990s.

In past years such bad news has been good news reinsurers for reinsurers able to push through rate increases after heavy losses.

But, last month's Turkish earthquake and the storms and cold in North America earlier in the year will not prove costly enough to justify rate rises. Latest estimates say insurers and reinsurers will pay out only $2 billion on the Turkish quake -- a fraction of the $17 billion paid out after Hurricane Andrew.