7:11 AM Nov 27, 1996

TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS ON SINGAPORE DRAFT

Geneva 27 Nov (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Textiles and Clothing, Labour Standards and the New Trade issues cannot be resolved at the level of Geneva negotiators, and would go before the Singapore Ministerial Conference for negotiations at that level, trade officials said Wednesday, when they broke up for lunch after a negotiating session.

How these issues would be posed to the Ministers and their decisions is a question that is not yet settled, and has to be tackled, they said.

But it seems unlikely that a draft with controversial texts incorporated could go to Singapore, some said.

As some of them envisage, the WTO head reporting to the Singapore Ministerial Conference on the informal Heads of Delegation (HOD) process he has chaired, and the consensus on the parts of the text agreed upon, and indicate the areas of no consensus, for ministers to tackle.

But there was still some question on how the areas without a consensus would be reported on to the SMC - whether as part of an entire draft Declaration text or separately?

At the informal heads of delegation meeting on 22 November, the WTO head, Mr. Renato Ruggiero was left in no doubt by several developing countries that they would not allow a draft to go forward to Singapore containing disputed paragraphs.

But in other areas, after some tough negotiations, and blunt talk, there has been progress and language has been drafted which everyone could live with -- even if the language is very obfuscating.

The negotiators had been going over the draft of a Ministerial Declaration, put forward by the WTO head on 21 November, and which had received general, and some details comments, at the 22 November informal heads of delegations meeting.

The drafting/negotiating exercise began Monday within a limited group of invited delegations and broke up a little after midnight Monday.

Negotiators came back Tuesday, meeting in what became an open-ended green room consultations, an "informal HOD process", and the meeting broke up at about 3 am Wednesday, with diplomats back again in the morning.

They were due to reassemble after lunch again to continue their informal negotiations - when they are expected to address the procedure for reporting to Singapore on issues lacking consensus.

When they broke up at lunch time, trade diplomats said that after some difficult and painful negotiations, drafting language had been found or seemed likely to be reached on a number of paragraphs relating to the implementation, regional arrangements, built-in agenda, the services negotiations and on the trade and environment issue.

The negotiations on the regional arrangements and the environment questions, diplomats said had taken hours of wrangling, before some compromise could be reached.

The negotiators have put aside the paragraphs relating to labour standards and the new trade agenda -- issues on which there is so much fundamental difference that the issue is one of having them in or out of the draft and negotiations for "drafting" compromise language would not produce any results.

There was also a similar impasse on the issue of textiles and clothing, where the US, the EU and Canada were resisting any unequivocal reiteration of the commitment to implement what has been already agreed to, namely the Uruguay Round Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC).

One trade official said that the United States seemed to be holding this back to get a "trade-off" at Singapore on labour standards and or government procurement, two issues it was pushing.

But one Third World diplomat said there was no possible trade off between agreeing to do what the WTO members, and the importing countries, are committed in any case to do on this issue, and the exporting countries accepting new obligations or issues.

Even the most forward-looking and ambitious language that exporting countries might seek on the textiles and clothing issue will not advance the ATC by an inch. "So what is there to trade-off?" he asked.

Another exasperated Third World diplomat said "we can live without a reference in the declaration to the textiles and clothing issue; we can even live without a declaration at Singapore. At the General Council we have already adopted and taken note of the reports and recommendations of the various WTO bodies, and work based on this will go on. We don't have to pay a price for it."

According to the original schedule, there was to have been an informal heads of delegations meeting Wednesday afternoon to receive a final draft that could be forwarded to the Singapore meeting.

That meeting is now likely to be put off for several hours, and may even be held only Thursday.