Feb 20, 1989

DUNKEL NOT YET READY TO FORMULATE HIS OWN SOLUTIONS.

GENEVA, FEBRUARY 17 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN)— GATT Director-General Arthur Dunkel appears to have indicated Thursday evening that he is not yet in a position to put forward any compromise texts of his own in any of the four deadlocked areas of the Uruguay round.

In his capacity as chairman of the official level meetings of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), Dunkel has been conducting "green room" consultations on textiles, safeguards, trade-related intellectual property rights and agriculture.

He has just completed one round of consultations in these areas, and began a second round on textiles Friday.

On Monday he is scheduled to hold consultations an the issue of "safeguards" or the "escape clause" in GATT under which Contracting Parties can take emergency trade restrictive actions to protect domestic industry under specified circumstances.

The consultations on agriculture are now scheduled for March 6, and that on TRIPS in week of March 13, the GATT spokesman announced Friday.

Next week Dunkel is going to Tokyo to represent the GATT the funeral of Emperor Hirohito, and on his way back Dunkel will meet with Asian Ministers at Bangkok, and perhaps also visit Delhi, the spokesman said.

At the end of the first round of consultations on textiles and safeguards, participants had said that for the second round Dunkel would probably formulate his own ideas on paper.

At a meeting Thursday evening of the TNC at level of heads of delegations in Geneva, Dunkel would appear to have indicated that he was not ready yet to formulate texts that would command a consensus. He hoped to be able to provide some texts covering all the four areas.

Some participants said it was their impression that perhaps Dunkel would do so in his final round of consultations scheduled for the week of march 20.

The TNC itself is to have a high level meeting in the first week of April to consider the outcome of these consultations as well as the results achieved at Montreal which have been put on hold.