Nov 4, 1991
AND NOW GATT'S "WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY" IN NOVEMBER!
GENEVA, NOVEMBER 1 (CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) – November is the "window of opportunity" for any political package to be concluded in the Uruguay Round, a GATT spokesman declared Friday. In late September and again in October, GATT Director-General Arthur Dunkel, who chairs official level meetings of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) had projected November as a "make-or-break" month in the live-year old Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, and had set an October 31 deadline to the negotiators to produce draft agreements. GATT officials had been privately saying that if the negotiators failed to produce clean texts, Dunkel and the chairmen of the various groups would and present them to the negotiators. But the deadline came and passed without any clean texts emerging from the negotiators or the chairmen in any of the crucial areas, though there have been some "working drafts". Dunkel (who also chairs the agriculture and textiles and clothing negotiations) and the chairmen of the five other groups are reportedly feeling they could not risk their own credibility in producing a text when the negotiators had in fact not been negotiating since the resumption of the tam after the summer. The GATT spokesman told journalists Friday that no meetings were being set for next week but that an official level meeting of the Uruguay Round Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) would meet in mid-week to hear a report from Dunkel and decide on a scenario. At the TNC next week, possibly on Wednesday or Thursday, when Dunkel will present an assessment of the state of play in the negotiations. The TNC would review this and decide on the scenario of the negotiations. Meanwhile the U.S. and EC at the level of EC Director-General for Agriculture Guy Legras and the U.S. agriculture under-secretary Richard Crowder are reported to be still bilaterally negotiating on agriculture to see whether they could strike a deal. The U.S., EC, Japan and Australia are to confer in London this weekend while a meeting is scheduled thereafter between the U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward Madigan and EC Agriculture Commissioner Ray MacSharry. President George Bush and EC Commission President Delors are also due to meet November 9 at The Hague, though this is a long-scheduled meeting in their regular U.S.-EC summits and trade and Uruguay Round will be low down on their priorities. On thursday at the GATT, the negotiating groups on Rules and TRIMs and that on institutional issues met, but without making any progress in any of their areas, participants said. In the institutional group, the EC formally presented the structure for an agreement on a multilateral trade organisation. In the text before the Brussels Ministerial meeting and in discussions at Brussels, the EC had merely proposed a political decision to create an MTO to provide an organisational structure. At that time, the EC had said the MTO would not change the rights and obligations of the Contracting Parties of GATT and that the agreement on MTO would have no substantive provisions but merely incorporate the results of the Uruguay Round. In their new proposal of a "Draft outline of role and tasks of a Multilateral Trade Organisation", the EC has put forward what it describes as the main elements of an "organisational treaty" establishing a MTO. The EC paper says the elements inter alia should be: * A single institutional framework for all existing GATT agreements as well as for all results of the Uruguay Round; * An integrated Dispute Settlement procedure applicable to all parts covered by this institutional framework; * A regular Trade Policy Review Mechanism, covering all parts covered by this institutional framework; The EC's intention would appear to be that the integrated settlement procedures applicable to the GATT and its agreements, Services and TRIPs, would in effect enable the majors to engage in cross-retaliation. The TPRM covering all parts of the agreement would also enable the secretariat and the GATT Council to review the implementation and domestic laws and practices of countries not only in the trade in goods (as is being done under the mid-term review accord) but on intellectual property, services and other issues. The whole range of domestic and international economic policies of countries would be brought under review and scrutiny through the TPRM. The other elements in the EC proposal would call for provisions on membership of the MTO, establishment of an Intentional Bureau or Secretariat consisting of a Director-General and his staff, Budgetary provisions, provisions on the legal capacity of the organisation, privileges, immunities, relations with other organisations and "Final provisions" (which normally refers to the entry into force and other requirements). The EC, as also the U.S. and other ICs pushing for the agreements in the Uruguay Round in goods, services and intellectual property issues to be treated as a single package which everyone must sign and accept. Several Third World countries have questioned this and expressed their opposition and reservations. In informal papers circulated by them before the Brussels meeting last December 7 the majors ICs had envisaged that if sufficiently large number of participants accepted and signed a package, while a few remained recalcitrant, the latter will be "invited" to withdraw from the GATT. If on the other hand only the ICs and a handful of others joined the package, they would withdraw and set up a super-GATT. In the discussions in the institutional group, chaired by Uruguay's Julio Lacarte-Muro, India supported by Egypt and Yugoslavia reportedly said they could not accept the proposal for an MTO and integrated dispute settlement. Argentina, Philippines and Hong Kong felt it was "premature" to consider these institutional questions. The U.S. for its part supported the integrated dispute settlement concept but could not accept its being made contingent on an MTO, while Canada and Switzerland supported the EC move. In the Rules and TRIMs group, its chairman Amb. Georges Maciel of Brazil said the group had four or five very difficult areas and identified them as anti-dumping, subsidies, TRIMs and balance-of-payments where there had been no movement in the consultations, at least not enough to enable it to be reflected in a revised text. On anti-dumping, there was no basis for formulating any text. While he had put forward a procedural text on the BOP, participants had said they needed to reflect it on. The text put forward by Maciel, though described as one relating to procedures and not changing in any the way substantive rights of Third World Contracting Parties under Art. XVIII: B, on first glance, in fact appeared to have provisions that would enable others to raise some substantial disputes over the policies of countries claiming balance-of-payments protection. On TRIMs, where he has put forward a paper and has held informal consultations, Maciel reported that there were wide differences on definition, coverage, level of disciplines, transitionary periods.