Apr 5, 1990

AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND CONCERNS OVER KOREA-U.S. BEEF SETTLEMENT.

GENEVA, APRIL 3 (BY CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) -- The U.S. and South Korea have settled their differences over the implementation by South Korea of the findings of the GATT panel on restrictions on imports of beef, the GATT Council was advised Tuesday.

No details were disclosed, but the U.S. would appear to have said that the terms of the agreement were consistent with the panel report, reaffirmed Korea’s GATT obligations and undertakings regarding the principle of liberalisation of access to the Korean market on an MFN basis, for annual growth factor in imports during the initial transition period, and for direct access between suppliers and buyers in the Korean market.

But Australia and New Zealand, who also had complained against Korean beef imports and won their case before the panel, reportedly expressed their concern that consultations in February and March had not resolved the problem from their point of view. They also wanted to know details of the U.S.-Korean agreement to make sure that there was no discrimination.

The U.S. furnished however no details. Korea said it was its intention to continue further consultations with Australia and New Zealand and would report to the Council on the results.

The Council took no action on the reports of the working party that went into the waiver to the U.S. over the U.S. Agricultural Adjustment Act for the two years ending 1988.

The Council was also unable to adopt the report of a panel that went into a dispute between the EEC and U.S. over the U.S. sugar import regime, which also turned on the manner of U.S. use of the waiver. The Panel had held against the EEC.

In what a GATT spokesman described as the increasing tendency of losing parties in panel disputes to reargue their case before the GATT Council, the EEC presented a detailed critique of the panel’s findings.

The U.S. asked the Council to adopt the report and complained that the EEC was adopting a "rather selective moral tone". The U.S. recalled that it had put its own waiver on the negotiating table in the Uruguay Round negotiations and suggested that the EEC's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and the way it had been operated should also be subject to examination.

In their comments some of the Cairns Group members, while critical of the way the U.S. had used the agriculture waiver were not willing to support the EEC, suggesting like the U.S., that the problems should be negotiated in the Uruguay Round.

In other comments, Tanzania noted that if the U.S. which had emerged as industrially and economically most advanced after the war had needed 35 years of protection for agriculture, this should be kept in mind in the Uruguay Round in the time-periods within which Third World countries were being asked to give up protection of their fledgling domestic economies.

The Council was unable to take any decision too on the report of the working party that had undertaken the triennial review, for the period 1984 to 1986, of para four of the Swiss protocol of accession which in effect exempt Switzerland from GATT obligations in agriculture.

The GATT spokesman could give no explanation as to why there had been so much delay in the working party over review of the implementation of the Swiss protocol, merely saying that the GATT had been busy with the Uruguay Round.

As has now become a common practice, in neither case was there a consensus report and recommendations.

In the Swiss case, the report of the working party showed broad range of criticism of the Swiss by participants for the Swiss failure to supply detailed information, particularly on the way their beef import regime was administered and how other mechanisms were applied, to enable judgements to be made.