8:18 AM Oct 11, 1993

FRANCE WEIGHS LIMITED ACCORD OPTION

Geneva (TWN) -- The French cabinet was due to meet again on Monday to consider the overall situation over the Uruguay Round and evolve a common position.

Last week various ministers, particularly foreign and industry and trade ministers had made some statements that were contradictory, with the industry minister appearing to favour some compromises over agriculture and the foreign minister reiterating French opposition.

After a meeting on Friday which appears to have led to no decision, the meeting Monday is expected to focus on possibilities of arranging a "smaller package" keeping out the more controversial areas (presumably agriculture etc) and concluding the negotiations, while providing for a framework to continue negotiations on other unresolved issues. Such a package is unlikely to find many 'takers' in Geneva.

IPS adds from Paris:

Meanwhile, French farmers are urging their government to block the so-called 'Blair House' agreement on European Community farm trade subsidy cuts as the vexed issue comes up for debate at EC-U.S. talks in Washington this Wednesday.

"We expect our government to exercise its veto powers (at the EC)," said Arnaud, secretary-general of the farmers' group Coordination Rurale, which mounted blockades around the capital in mid-September in protest at the accord.

"Otherwise, it will be total war," he warned. "The reaction of the farmers will be very radical and I do not know any more how they can be controlled."

EC Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan meets U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor in Washington on Oct. 13 to resolve the GATT issue. In earlier talks in late September, Brittan said that "serious" progress had been made on areas of dispute.

French officials are sceptical that Wednesday's talks will achieve a solution fully acceptable to Paris that will meet U.S. and others' insistence that the long-moribund Uruguay Round is wrapped up by Dec. 15.

"Certainly, talks on agriculture with the Americans have advanced," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told journalists this week. "But I have the impression that one is simply searching for token gestures that will save the face of France...Token gestures are not enough...It is not a matter of saving faces, but a matter of obtaining real modifications to Blair House."

But preparing the public for an eventual compromise, French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur has called on all sides to accept that "no one is 100 percent correct".

Arnaud says the collapse of the GATT talks will force a rethink about the consequences of world trade liberalisation and "hopefully, a French veto will oblige people to think twice."

"There is so much at stake for France, for the EC and for everyone, that there must be a real debate that is absent until now," he said. "It is pure madness to make countries, which do not have the same standards of living, compete against one another... We are not against the principles of GATT that there be rules governing international trade. Rules are inevitable, otherwise it will be a jungle out there.. But the principles of GATT have been railroaded by technocrats in favour of an all-out free world trade."

The GATT, he said, saw things only from a financial point of view and did not consider its consequences on the quality of food and the environment. "Things must not be seen only from the commercial aspect," he said.

Mike Ritchie, executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, based in Minnesota in the United States, dismissed the perception that French farmers are all alone in their opposition to the Blair House and the GATT.

Ritchie says farmers worldwide have met several times to discuss the draft agreement on agriculture drawn up by former GATT director Arthur Dunkel.

During a recent visit to Paris for an international farmers' meeting he said farmers all over the world bank on the French to stop the GATT farm talks and reverse the free trade trend.

"There is opposition worldwide to the GATT, including in the U.S., but for many farmers, seeing the French gives them hope.

"I go to dozens and dozens of farmers' meetings all over the United States and in the world and wherever I go, I am asked: 'Will the French farmers hold out? Will they be able to stop Blair House and the Uruguay Round which will destroy farmers on both sides of the Atlantic Sea and in the Third World?'."

But CAP subsidies have wrought proven havoc in the developing world. The African beef market was self-sufficient during the 1970s, but in the mid-1980s beef importing countries like Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin bought cheap EC beef dumped on their markets, crippling the incomes of African farmers. In Burkina Faso alone, EC meat dumping has resulted in a two-thirds decline in prices of local cattle over ten years, say British development charity Christian Aid.