THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES COMPLAIN OF IMBALANCES AND ASYMMETRIES.

Feb 24, 1990

THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES COMPLAIN OF IMBALANCES AND ASYMMETRIES.

GENEVA, FEBRUARY 22 (BY CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) -- Third World countries voiced complaints of growing imbalances and asymmetries in the Uruguay Round negotiating processes at a meeting of their informal group at the GATT Thursday.

The group is to meet again Friday to discuss the text of a draft statement voicing their complaints, revised in the light of comments made at the meeting.

Participants said that while the text received general support in the group, views were also expressed that there was no use of issuing such statements or speeches in the informal group, but for the Third World countries to act, as some of them did in Montreal, to block the negotiating processes in each and every negotiating group.

This was the first meeting of the group since last November. In the absence, for personal reasons, of its chairman, Amb. Rubens Ricupero of Brazil, Columbia's Amb. Felipe Jaramillo chaired the meeting of the informal group.

A number of participants called for more frequent meetings of the group and for greater coordination among Third World countries.

The general tenor of the planned statement, as well as interventions by several delegations, would appear to have been that while the issues of concern to the Third World had received scant attention, and only procedural decisions were being taken instead of substantive ones, an the new themes and areas of interest to the ICs, there was an effort to push ahead, often in disregard of the Punta del Este mandate or midterm accords.

Several participants also said that agreements and accords in each and every one of the 15 negotiating areas should be ready before July, to enable an evaluation to be made (as required by the Punta del Este Declaration) of the results in terms of the Objectives and the General Principles of the Declaration, "taking into account all issues of interest to the less-developed contracting parties".

This was a substantive requirement and not a formality, and the blueprint of final agreements should be drawn up before, and not put off till the Ministerial meeting in Brussels, several warned.

There were also demands on need for "transparency" in the negotiations (and in the work of the group itself).

These views were voiced even as the negotiations in each of the negotiating groups seemed to have moved into a phase where key talks were being carried out among a small group (mainly of the major ICs with a few of the Third World called in selectively depending on the subject or issue), with the rest kept in the dark and, as usual, presented, by the chairman of the negotiating groups, at the last minute with a text for formal approval.

Even mare, some Third World observers noted, in all the so-called "market access" areas, the "procedures" now agreed upon involve Third World countries paying "an entrance fee" (by making an "acceptable" level of "offers" of liberalisation) to be able to sit at the negotiating table.

Some old time GATT observers said that the Third World countries who complained were themselves to blame. If those not consulted, insisted on starting negotiations in the groups, taking the chairman's text as the starting point, and refused to approve the previously "cooked up" text, the practice would end, they suggested.