6:50 AM Feb 21, 1994

US-JAPAN DISPUTES HOLD UP SCHEDULES

Geneva 21 Feb (TWN) -- The US-Japan dispute on their mutual market access offers and concessions in the Uruguay Round is reported to be still holding up the filing of the schedules of market access commitments by the four Quad trading partners (Canada, EC, Japan and the United States), according to Quad sources.

The deadline (agreed upon at the TNC before the negotiations were closed on 15 December) for the filing of schedules was 15 February.

The schedules were to include the market access tariff concessions, and any preferential tariffs, the non-tariff concessions, and in agriculture both the market access commitments (on MFN and tariff quota basis) and the commitments on reduction of domestic support and export subsidies.

At the 13-14 Quad meetings, the second since the official end of the negotiations on 15 December, the four agreed among themselves that they should exchange their schedules for scrutiny (presumably to ensure that the schedules reflect their mutual agreements) and file them with GATT simultaneously, doing so by last Friday.

On Wednesday, Japan's chief negotiator, Amb. Nobutoshi Akao, had charged the US, at a press conference, of 'bad faith' and 'betrayal of trust' in going back on their mutual understanding, and taking back concessions agreed to and the final offers exchanged among the four on 15 December.

The complaint was over the US taking back the concessions on consumer electronics -- on the ground that the 15 December offer on the table was 'conditional' and that Japan's failure to agree to zero-tariff on wood and wood products, copper and white spirits had forced the US to revise its offers,

Akao had said that the Japanese view that the 15 offers exchanged were the 'final offers' had been confirmed by the EC and Canada too, and that if the US persisted in its course, Japan might be forced to take back some of its own concessions, targeting those where the US is the main or only supplier to the Japanese market. The US 'offers' provided to Japan by fax were being carefully studied before deciding on any such decision, he had added.

As of Monday morning, the Japanese were said to be still 'scrutinising' the US "offers" provided to them on Tuesday last, and none of the Quad had filed their schedules.

After Akao's press conference, in Washington the USTR Mickey Kantor was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that the US had not withdrawn anything and that it was engaged in 'quiet discussions'.

The Japanese were presumably hoping that the US would revise its position, in the light of the view of the other Quad members, and not force Japan to 'retaliate' by modifying some of its own offers.

Some EC sources, informally agreed that the US actions were not the kind of 'gentlemanly trust' on which country-delegates negotiated in the GATT -- a provisional treaty based on governments commitment to make their 'best endeavour' to comply, and with negotiations necessarily based a great deal on good faith and words and terms accepted in private meaning what each understands it to be.

The GATT Director-General Peter Sutherland was reported to be calling a heads of delegations meeting of the Uruguay Round participants on Tuesday to consider the situation.