May 4, 1985

EFTA FOR NEW ROUND ON BASIS OF CONSENSUS IN GATT.

GENEVA, MAY 2 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN)— Members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) favour a new round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, on the basis of a consensus in GATT, Amb. Georg Reisch of Austria, declared Thursday.-

Reisch, Austria’s Ambassador to GATT and UN agencies in Geneva and the current chairman of the EFTA Council, was answering questions at a press luncheon hosted by EFTA.-

EFTA groups together Austria, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, and has arrangements with Spain and Yugoslavia.-

Under an agreement between EFTA and EEC, Industrial manufactured goods from member countries have duty free entry into each other's territory.-

A Ministerial meeting of EFTA countries is scheduled for May 9-10 at Vienna.-

The issue of a new round is on the agenda, according the secretary-general of EFTA, Per Kleppe.-

EFTA Ministers, Per Kleppe said, would discuss at the Vienna meeting, developments in the international trading system, and take a common position on a new GATT round, which important western countries were seeking to launch.-

Asked how EFTA countries saw the prospects for the new round, in the light of the current position of the Third World countries and their opposition to it without prior implementation of past commitment and the GATT work programme, Reisch said as smaller Industrial countries, EFTA members had a stake in strengthening the multilateral trading system and its rules and disciplines, embodied in the general agreement.-

"But our position depends on a consensus being reached in GATT on the new round. While other more powerful countries are in a position to say they will launch a new round on 'take or leave it basis', we in EFTA would like to reach a consensus on it in GATT", Reisch declared.-

"That is why", Reisch added, "we (Austria) asked the GATT Council (on May 1) for a through discussion on this matter, which has so far been discussed everywhere except in GATT".-

"We want our friends in the developing world to be involved in it, so that all sides find it to be in their interest to be involved in the new round, and that developing countries feel it is in their interest to be involved in it".-

"We do not feel they should go into a new round because other powers have decided to launch it, but because it would be in their national interests to go into these negotiations".-

EFTA countries, Amb. Reisch added, had made this position of theirs known at the Paris OECD Ministerial meeting, and they would make their views known in greater detail at the Vienna meeting.-

"It is no secret", Reisch said, "that EFTA countries are in favour of a new round on the basis of a consensus and that they hope that there would be enough substance in it which would interest all Contracting Parties of the general agreement".-

Asked about EFTA views on the U.S. demand for inclusion of "trade in services" in GATT and in the new round, Reisch said: "our basic interest is to defend the existing multilateral system and making it stronger. Too much is now taking place outside the GATT, and we do not like it".-