8:12 AM Dec 9, 1993

A DEADLINE THAT IS NO DEADLINE?

Geneva 9 Dec (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Uruguay Round negotiators, who have been working to a 15 December deadline to complete all the substantive negotiations and filing their schedules, seem now to be facing the prospect that even after that they could be facing pressures from the US to make more market access concessions, while unable to extract any in return from the US.

This became clear Wednesday night as a small group of negotiators met to sort out the technical problems of concluding the negotiations and approving the accords at the 15 December Trade Negotiations Committee.

The US has been telling its negotiating partners that it must have on hand all the substantial agreements and the schedules (tariff and non-tariff concessions by countries in goods, the agriculture schedules, and the initial service commitments) by that date to enable the US President, Bill Clinton, to notify Congress before midnight (US eastern time) of 15 December to be able to get Congress to dispose off the package and the amending legislations under the fast-track authority.

The delegations and GATT officials are now discovering, or if they had been aware even before have been keeping it a secret from their own people, that not only is the US deadline more flexible than made out -- competent US trade groups say that by 15 December midnight Clinton has only to notify Congress of his intention to conclude a deal, but need give no details, and could withdraw from this if he finds the deal not something the Congress would buy.

Even more, Washington sources say that the Congress, particularly the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate facing elections in 1994 November, may not want to vote on the divisive issue before those elections and thus the Congressional 'fast-track, yes or no vote' could come after the 8 November 1994 polls.

With the US and EC having engaged in such last minute negotiations, and yet to reveal not only their market access offers but their accords in modifying the agriculture and other texts, and not making available their own market access or service schedules (despite several deadlines that have come and gone by), other negotiating partners have been at a disadvantage in terms of their own bilaterals or filing their own schedules.

In technical consultations Wednesday, called to see how the normal "verification" process -- countries which had exchanged concessions being able to make sure that they concessions are reflected in the schedules filed by those with whom they had exchanged such concession -- the flexibility available after 15 December was sprung on the small group of officials.

The US appears to have indicated that while it would not be able to reduce anything in the package -- i.e. concessions made to it by one or the other of its partners would be unable to reduce or revise them downwards -- the US is planning to continue its bilaterals with some key partners in order to get them to improve on their concessions.

The EC position also appears to be similar and that while they would like to complete all the bilateral negotiations with some 20-30 key countries by 15 December, they envisaged continuing the negotiations with others beyond that date.

Several of the developing countries are concerned over this.

It would mean, that even after the negotiations officially close and all the texts of agreements where they have had to yield are "sealed", they would be under pressure from the two majors, and more so from the US, to do more and give more concessions 'bilaterally'.

In theory any country, now a GATT member, could just file its own schedule or offer, or even remain content with its current GATT schedule, and file the smallest possible offer in service to be able to sign the GATS and the MTO, and refuse to do anything more after 15 December.

But few of them have so far shown their ability or backbone to stand up to the Americans or the Europeans.

The discussions have been inconclusive, and given the political implications will not be resolved at a technical level, but would have to be dealt with at level of heads of delegations.

Subject to this problem, the basic thinking currently is that the "basic" tariff negotiations -- no one is clear though what is 'basic' -- would be completed by 15 Dec.

Thereafter, up to 15 February, delegations would have time to verify the schedules of others, both to ensure that they reflected the concessions mutually exchanged and their conformity with the DFA texts.

Once accepted, they may not be challenged later.

The 'verification' of the schedules, after the negotiations came to a close is nothing unusual. It happened at the time of the Tokyo Round too -- though, in comparison to the Uruguay Round, it was simple.

However, in the case of the services, the GATS, which is the first agreement of this type without any precedent -- where the concessions are not in terms of 'services' that cross the border, but of services being produced within a country, and service-personnel and consumer movements across border, it could be quite complicated needing considerable mutual goodwill and acceptance of bonafides.

But whether the 'verification' and 'rectification' process could be used to have further negotiations and enable the majors, with their bilateral economic power, to extract more concessions is something that could not be decided.

The US and EC though are proceeding on the basis that, as in every other area where the GATT precedents and rules have been bent for their convenience, this too would be done.

In terms of the work ahead after 15 December, it is expected that some technical work would be carried out in drafting the ministerial declaration to be adopted at the TNC meeting, at ministerial level, at Marrakesh, sometime in mid-April.

At that meeting, the Ministers would just initial or authenticate the agreement and its schedules, and sign documents to take it back to their countries for consideration towards ratification.

After ratification, at least by a critical mass of countries with trade weight, an implementation conference is also envisaged.

What would happen to these schedules, if the US Congressional vote is put off till after the November elections is not clear. Even the possibility of this, when mentioned to some delegations, evoked surprise.

The Japanese for example have indicated that their ratification process could take as much as 18 months.

But in all such cases, governments who indicate they are in the process of ratification, are allowed to join in the process.

But in the case of the US, other trading partners would be chary of repeating the 1948 Havana Charter history, when they put the GATT into place as a provisional treaty and it has remained so till now.