Nov 30, 1988
GATT COUNCIL TO MEET IN MONTREAL AFTER TNC
GENEVA, NOVEMBER 28 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN)— The council of Representatives of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the body that exercises all the powers of Contracting Parties in between their sessions, is to meet in Montreal on December 8 or 9, immediately after the meeting of the Uruguay round Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC). This was disclosed Monday by the GATT director-general at an informal meeting of some journalists going to Montreal with Mr. Ricardo Zerbino, the Uruguay Minister for Finance and Economy who chairs the TNC. According to several GATT diplomats, this will be the first time ever that the GATT Council has met outside of Geneva. The TNC has now a membership of over 100 countries - GATT Contracting Parties as well as others who are seeking to negotiate their entry into GATT and have been allowed to participate in the Uruguay round negotiations. But the Punta del Este declaration, while allowing non-GATT countries to participate in the MTNS, has stipulated that participation in negotiations "relating to the amendment or application of GATT provisions or the negotiations of new provisions" will only be open to Contracting Parties. While the meetings of the TNC will be open only to participants in the Uruguay round and the few international organisations allowed. To attend as observers, the GATT Council meeting will be open to many other regular observers. The Council meeting has had to be convened in Montreal as a result of a legal issue raised by Jamaica, as to what "decisions" only Contracting Parties could take, and what decisions the TNC could take. This forced the GATT director-general to clarify that the results of any negotiations (at Montreal in the TNC), "relating to the amendment or application of GATT provisions or the negotiation of new provisions" cannot be finally adopted by the TNC, but have to be submitted for approval to a body representing the Contracting Parties to GATT - the Contracting Parties (session) or the Council. (Suns 2049) GATT Council meetings are convened at ten days notice, which means that notices would have to go out by Tuesday. Since this would be an ordinary meeting of the GATT council, it also means that all issues that are pending from earlier meetings, or which any contracting party has notified is to be brought up, has to be considered at the Montreal meeting. A number of pending disputes like U.S.-EEC disputes on hormone treated meat, and the U.S. unilateral actions against Brazil, imposing penal tariffs on a wide range of products of an annual average value of about 40 million dollars, because of Brazil’s refusal to comply with U.S. demands to give patent protection to drug imports from the U.S., will also have to figure on the Council agenda. In disclosing the Council meeting, Dunkel said the Council would be convened in order to adopt in the GATT framework any recommendations or decisions of the Ministers at the mid-term review meeting of the TNC. The chairman of the GATT council currently is Amb. John Weekes of Canada. The agenda for the council is fixed by the chairman and the GATT director-general, and the agenda for the Montreal meeting is going to be pretty tricky both on what would be included and their order. That a GATT council meeting would have to be convened has been known to GATT delegates since early last week - during green room consultations over the report of the Group of Negotiations on Goods (GNG). Any issue that any delegation has asked the secretariat or the chairman to put on the agenda of the Council meeting would thus have to automatically be included on the agenda of the Montreal meeting. It is clear that the U.S., and Canada now moving to ratify the free trade agreement with the U.S., would not like to see controversies at Montreal, but it is difficult to see how these could be avoided. However, it is already being said that the Montreal meeting had to end at six PM local time on Friday, since the meeting place has to be prepared for other events on Saturday. This could perhaps by used as an excuse to put off all controversial matters, excepting those arising from the TNC decisions, to a meeting in Geneva. But whether others would be willing to play the game remains to be seen. The Uruguayan Minister said that he had come to Geneva to acquaint himself about GATT procedures and. discuss with the secretariat and the delegates about the organisation of the Montreal meeting. The TNC at Montreal has to tackle in at least ten negotiating areas differences that have been formulated in the reports within square brackets. Zerbino envisaged that these negotiations would have to be done in three or four groups, but would not disclose his ideas at the moment - both on the number of groups and on what each group would do and who would chair and conduct them. The U.S.-Canadian strategy for Montreal has been upset by the fact that ministers have been posed with the problem of taking decisions an a number of issues like safeguards, textiles etc, where the north wants no decisions at Montreal on the ground it would prejudice the future negotiations, but wants decisions, for example in tariffs, for reduction of tariffs by third world countries and their binding their tariffs. There is some talk in the GATT secretariat that at Montreal separate negotiating groups, within the TNC, would be organised for the issues that are of concern to the north - services, trade-related intellectual property rights, and agriculture, and all others dumped into a fourth group - thus making it difficult to negotiate or force decisions on these. However, some GATT participants have reservations on this.