Mar 12, 1991
AGENDA FOR TECHNICAL WORK ON SERVICES IN APRIL.
GENEVA, MARCH 11 (BY CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) – Negotiators on Services appear to have agreed on an agenda of sorts for technical work on some issues in the week of April 8, with most participants, except for the U.S., making clear that further work should be on the basis of the structure agreed to in work done prior to Brussels.This would appear to have been the outcome of the consultations on services on March 8 in the re-started Uruguay Round negotiations. The consultations were chaired by Arthur Dunkel, in his capacity as chairman of the official-level meetings of the TNC. No decisions were taken on the future Organisation of the work, but comments from a number of Third World delegations underscored their view that the structure of negotiations decided at Punta del Este, namely the Group of Negotiations on Services (GNS) alone could provide the basis. This appeared to relate to the concept of the services negotiations being separate from the goods and also to who is to chair and conduct the consultations: the chairman of the GNS, Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia, some secretariat official or another person. This in turn would raise questions about other consultations. On Friday, Dunkel would appear to have reassured the participants that the basis for work on services would continue to be Punta del Este Declaration, the Montreal mid-term review text and the draft text before the Brussels meeting (W/35/rev/1). A number of delegations reportedly made clear that they favoured continuing work on the basis of this hypothesis and maintaining the structure agreed upon prior to the Brussels meeting and not reopen issues on which some agreement had been arrived at. This appeared to be related to the U.S. position. In private talks, the U.S. would appear to have indicated that in the re-started negotiations, it wants to reopen many issues settled in the draft text before the Brussels meeting. These issues would include questions relating to the permissible actions of Third World countries for reasons of balance-of-payments, the issues of transfers and payments for services transactions and the provisions relating to "development". Just on toe eve of the Brussels meeting, the U.S. had gone upon back the understandings in the draft for unconditional most-favoured-nation treatment. At Brussels while suggesting it was willing to revise its views, the U.S. in fact took the position that its agreement to the MFN would depend on initial offers for liberalisation of other participants. This was interpreted to be merely a different way of calling for "conditional MFN". In its comments Friday, the U.S. would appear to have said in its view that it would be difficult to complete work on the framework and annexes without knowing how countries would commit themselves in initial liberalisation. After some discussions, it was agreed that next meeting for "technical work" in informal consultations would be in the week of April 8 and work would begin on the schedule of commitments. This is expected to be technical work on how it is to be formulated and incorporated by individual participants and not substantive work of negotiations on initial commitments. The secretariat is also to elaborate a further indicative list of sectors to be annexed to the framework. Other issues identified for further work include: * Safeguards, subsidies, government procurement and dispute settlement, * "Horizontal" agreements and their implications sectoral agreements such as in civil aviation, shipping, etc.