Mar 25, 1991

CONSULTATIONS ON URUGUAY ROUND STRUCTURES, CHAIRMEN.

GENEVA, MARCH 21 (CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) – Consultations are under way in GATT on the Organisation and structure of the consultations and negotiations to be carried out on the 15 items on the Uruguay Round agenda in the current phase of "restarted" negotiations.

Consultations are on the question of number of groups and clusters in which the further work, technical and substantive, are to be carried out, the chairmanship of the groups and other so-called procedural matters that really involve substance.

Third World participants said the Chairman of the GATT Contracting Parties, Amb. Rubens Ricupero of Brazil has been asked to hold consultations on the chairmanship, while Arthur Dunkel, chairman of the official level TNC meetings, is to hold green room consultations next week on the other issues.

Under the negotiating structures agreed to at Punta del Este, the negotiations on trade in goods are run by the Group of Negotiations on Goods (GNG) while that on trade in services is run, outside of the GATT framework but serviced by that secretariat, by the Group of Negotiations on Services (GNS). The GNG in turn organised 14 negotiating groups under it for negotiations on the 14 items under trade in goods.

At Brussels, the various issues were grouped together in six or seven clusters, each of which was headed by a Minister.

In agreeing to the restart of the negotiations in February, Dunkel made clear at the TNC, in response to the concerns of Third World countries, that the structures mandated by the Punta del Este declaration (GNG and GNS) would be maintained, and that further Organisation of the work would be settled in consultations.

While there is general understanding that the negotiations on various trade in goods issues could be undertaken now in a smaller number of groups (than the original 14), Third World countries have been chary of leaving the Organisation, participation and chairmanship in the hands of Dunkel or done in an informal way.

Within the Latin American and Caribbean regional group, for example, there has been some concern expressed on these matters, and particularly over the talk of "dumping" the GNS chairman, Amb. Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia, and replacing him by someone from the Industrial World who could be "depended" upon to push things in the direction desired by leading ICs.

The names of the Canadian and Swedish delegates are being privately mentioned in this regard.

There has also been the concern of the Third World that the "consultations" and "negotiations", technical or substantive, should be transparent and open to all interested parties.

The attempt to have the various consultations continue in their present informal way, and chaired by a GATT official in the absence of Dunkel, apparently ran into trouble this week when a GATT official chaired the cluster consultations on Dispute Settlement and Final Act issues.

A number of Third World countries reportedly pointed out that in the post-Brussels phase, the consultations to promote an agreement was entrusted to Dunkel in his personal capacity as official level chair (of the TNC and it could not be delegated by him to anyone else, whether official or a delegate.Both in terms of the Brussels decision and the specific basis on which the negotiations have been "restarted", these matters should be settled n consultations and approved by the TNC.India, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico were among those who reportedly took this position.

The EC reportedly said that while it could not endorse these views it "understood" them and that it was time that the process was put on proper footing. Switzerland however said that the GATT Director-General could not look after everything and had the right to ask someone.

Having made this point, and with this caveat from the Third World participants about the future, the group (chaired by the GATT official) agreed on some of the technical-work that could be carried out on Dispute Settlement, participants said.

The technical work would relate to procedures for dealing with "non-violation complaints" (where a CP’s measures are not contrary to GATT provisions but still is viewed as affecting another CP’s interests, the catchall nullification and impairment provision in Article XXIII: l.b of the General Agreement, on trade disputes).Technical work is also to extend to so-called "horizontal" issues, namely, dispute settlement procedures and problems under the General Agreement and the various Tokyo Round codes each of which has its own procedure.

The European Community also wanted the work to embrace all dispute-settlement questions on the Uruguay Round agenda but this was objected to by Third World countries in relation to dispute settlement questions on services, TRIPs and TRIMs negotiations. These, they said, were substantive questions related to the institutional and implementation questions to be decided by Ministers at the end of the negotiations.