GATT MINISTERIAL MEETING AT PUNTA DEL ESTE.

Apr 17, 1986

GATT MINISTERIAL MEETING AT PUNTA DEL ESTE.

GENEVE, APRIL 15 (IFDA) – The GATT Ministerial Meeting on a new trade round is to be held at Punta del Este in Uruguay in the week of September 15, it was announced Tuesday.

This will be the first meeting of GATT Ministers to be held in a third world country.

Brussels and Montreal, which had been respectively sponsored by the EEC and Canada, were withdrawn after extensive consultations and negotiations over the last three months.

The decision to hold it in Punta del Este was reached by consensus at the meeting of the Preparatory Committee on Tuesday afternoon.

A GATT spokesman said that the extra costs to GATT of holding a meeting outside Geneva would be borne by the host country, but he could not put a figure immediately on this cost.

Other GATT sources said that this might involve three to four million dollars for a session, expected to last one week and bring to Uruguay about 1.500 people - delegates and their supporting staff, observers, GATT Secretariat, and media.