9:36 AM Oct 15, 1993

A POKER GAME WITH TOO MANY PLAYERS, AND WILD CARDS?

Geneva 15 Oct (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- "We are in a poker game," French industry minister, Gerard Longuet, is reported as having said in Brussels Thursday, about the Uruguay Round negotiations.

Longuet, who met Mickey Kantor the US Trade Representative, over dinner, is reported also as having added: "Virtually everyone is agreed to finish the card game before the night is out, but nothing is definitive until the last trick is played."

Participants in the Round in Geneva may or may not be encouraged by this and, given the somewhat varying voices from Paris about whether or not 15 December is a deadline to complete the negotiations, may even feel that the French do want to finish the card game.

With just about eight weeks to 'finish the game', the US and EC as the two major trading entities are keeping their cards close to their chest to show their hands and strike a deal at the last moment, but there are far too many other players involved and too many wild cards, a Geneva negotiator said Friday.

And the stakes have also been raised, with the GATT repeatedly talking about the consequences of a failure which, whether right or wrong, have acquired a 'media reality' of its own that could have some temporary unsettling effects even on markets that have already discounted the possible gains and failures, an economist in another international organization noted.

A Third World participant said that the US and EC on their bilateral issues -- whether it be audio-visual or anything else -- could go on stalling till the very end as between themselves -- but have to show their hands as far as other participants are concerned very quickly.

The levels of market access to be agreed upon between them, whether in industry or in agriculture, could be played till the end, but the general rules and criteria where others are involved have to be settled over the next couple of weeks, or not at all, one participant said.

The complication that the US side faces over the NAFTA pact under consideration in the Congress, and due to be completed with an yes or no vote in both Houses by mid-December, thus effectively tying Kantor's hands in making any concessions, is also there.

The market access group led by Canadian Germain Denis is due to hold plurilateral consultations Friday at the GATT -- in the morning on industrial goods sector, in the afternoon on agriculture and later in the evening a multilateral stock-taking exercise.

But the market access negotiations, one of the participants said, which were supposed to have been kicked off and multilateralised after the Tokyo Quad meetings in July, still remain stalled as the US and EC argue on what they agreed and settle the details.

Even then, the Quad accords cover only their mutual trades and neither side has seriously been negotiating with other trading partners who have all put their "offers" on the table but have had no real responses.

As the TNC head and GATT chief, Peter Sutherland, recognised at the TNC meeting in September, the market access negotiations are also tied into the questions relating to the texts of the agreement in the Draft Final Act, particularly over agriculture and textiles and clothing.

Germain Denis was also asked to hold consultations on these, but some of the players involved in this say that it has not got very far -- with US and EC clearly reluctant to get into issues of textual changes on which they are also battling each other.

On Thursday, Kantor also met with the French industry minister and the German economy minister, Gunter Rexrodt, who in effect chided both the US and France over their positions that could wreck the Uruguay Round and the GATT.

The reports out of Brussels Thursday night spoke of Kantor still refusing to renegotiate the Blair House accord, but this appeared to be a semantic position as to what "renegotiate" means.

However, negotiators in Geneva agree that while France has taken the public stand on changes in Blair House, there are others within the EC and in Europe (Nordics etc) who are hiding behind the French, but also want changes.

There are also the problems for Japan and South Korea, for example, over complete tariffication and allowing imports of rice and beef and other products.

The New York Journal of Commerce has reported that a US-Japan deal over rice has been stuck, while Japanese media have been reporting that Japan has made an "offer" and the ball is now in the US court.

But whatever the nature of the compromise (and there are several versions floating around), it clearly would involve further modifications in the Blair House text, whether in the tariffication formula or the period for market access or through provisions for waivers -- though this is something that could be carried out in the multilateral context when the textual changes to the DFA in the Blair House has to be incorporated.