Dec 12, 1988
NEGOTIATORS, AFTER ALL NIGHT EFFORTS, RESUME AGAIN.
MONTREAL, DECEMBER 8 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) – After all night negotiations Wednesday in a ministerial group of select countries, within the so-called "green room consultations" of GATT, negotiators were due to resume again Thursday afternoon at 21.00 GMT, in an effort to tackle some difficult issues. Meanwhile, the chairman of the TNC, Ricardo Zerbino of Uruguay, announced the extension by 24 hours of the Montreal ministerial meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC). This would presumably mean that the meeting could go on till Friday evening. Hard bargaining through the night produced some agreed texts on services, tariffs, dispute settlement, Functioning Of the GATT System (FOGS), but these were subject to agreements in other areas. The so-called "green room consultations" is the reference to the GATT practice of informal negotiations among a select group of important trading nations, and is so named after the colour of the wall-paper in the GATT director general's conference room in Geneva. As EEC Commissioner Willy De Clercq put it Thursday morning, there is nothing green in the room, neither in the colour nor the general environment of negotiations. Third world delegations, particularly those not "invited" to these consultations, and are chased out if they stray in, have been complaining that the consultations are not transparent at all, but pretty translucent. Every text agreed upon has to be brought before the Trade Negotiations Committee, where all the 105 participating countries in the round are represented, and its formal approval obtained. Why third world countries do not use the opportunity to refuse to blindly endorse things cooked up in "green room consultations" is something they are never able to explain, excepting that the smaller third world countries do not want to confront the major powers. The main issues where there is deadlock and agreement is eluding the negotiators are: agriculture, textiles and clothing, safeguards, and TRIPS or Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights. In agriculture, where the United States and the EEC are deeply divided on long-term commitments to "eliminate" or "reduce" government support, the two sides are due to attempt another bilateral effort to find solution. In textiles, the third world textile exporting countries are insisting on a freeze on further import restrictions under the Multifibre Arrangements (MFA), and agreement to negotiate the winding down of the "MFA", with the process starting at the end of the current "MFA-4" (September 1991), and a time-frame set for the end of this process and complete integration of the sector into GATT rules. The EEC is the principal opponent, with demands and several linkages -- for trade liberalisation in this sector by the third world countries, for enhanced intellectual property rights (IPRS) protection, and "selective" safeguards. The United States and other industrialised countries, which also do not want to wind down the "MFA", are hiding behind the EEC’s opposition. On safeguards, a number of third world countries insist that there should not be merely a procedural decision here to continue the negotiations, but a political direction given on the issue of a safeguards agreement based on the GATT principle of non-discrimination among others. Here again the battle lines are between the third world countries and the EEC. In the area of "TRIPS", India has put forward a paper in effect calling for the issues of norms and standards being tackled outside GATT, in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and UNCTAD. No agreement was found at a small negotiating group working under the Turkish minister, Yusuf Ozal. At the "green room consultations", Ozal, in reporting on the outcome, would appear to have completely ignored the Indian paper, and presented a paper completely reflecting the U.S. - EEC positions. India would appear to have insisted on its paper too being circulated and brought to the table. In the discussions, the Indian paper was supported by over a dozen third world countries present ultimately. Ozal was asked to hold further consultations, taking both papers into account. But these consultations have also failed to produce any consensus, and the issue was going back to Ministers. At his press conference, De Clercq accused the Americans of trying to rewrite the mandate on agriculture at the mid-term review, but insisted that the demands of the united states and EEC on negotiating standards and norms inside GATT did not amount to rewriting the mandate. "We are only asking people to negotiate, and not sign an agreement here", De Clercq argued, but had no answer why then the EEC was refusing to "negotiate" and not "agree" on "elimination" of government subsidies as a long-term effort. On services, third world countries generally felt that they could "live with" the compromises here, and that their basic positions had not been compromised. The United States and the EEC claimed privately that the compromise texts rule out "labour" and "labour-intensive" services. But the agreed text, yet to be formally approved, while not mentioning "labour" and "labour-intensive" services would appear to have achieved the same purpose by talking about work on definition to include "cross-border movement of factors of production where such movement is essential to suppliers", about the work proceeding "without excluding any sector of trade in services a priori" and coverage (sectors of services) permitting "balance of interests" for all participants. But the conflicting interpretations, even before adoption, appear to mean that all the old arguments would be revived once negotiators go back to Geneva. On the "FOGS" issue, the compromise agreed upon for a trade policy review mechanism was reached only after the GATT secretariat's effort to provide for GATT teams to visit capitals was given up by the united states and other industrialised countries, and any such visits would be made at the invitation of a country. Two other pet ideas of the GATT secretariat, which third world participants charge is engaged in "empire-building", had also to be given up -- the idea of "independent -discussants" being named to cross-examine Representatives of countries on their trade policies, and the idea small steering group of ministers. While the last could still be raised in the negotiating process, there would be no mandate from Montreal for this, third world participants explained. The United States and the EEC which had been publicly announcing that they would have to leave Montreal by thursday evening for a scheduled U.S. - EEC meeting in Brussels, and that this was-the deadline, have quietly. put off their departures. The Americans claimed they were travelling by a private flight and thus not bound to schedules, and the EEC was finding some similar explanations. Argentina, in the meanwhile, has been saying that if no agreement was reached on short-term measures for agriculture, forcing both the united states and the EEC to stop further subsidisation and engage in agreed percentage reductions, it would withhold consensus on all areas "not of interest to developing countries." Argentinian delegates said they had made this clear in the "green room consultations", and planned to do so again Thursday.