Mar 22, 1990

DELHI MEET REJECTS LINKAGES BETWEEN GOODS AND NEW THEMES.

GENEVA, MARCH 21 (BY CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) -- Senior Trade officials of leading Third World countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America meeting at Delhi appear to have given their backing for efforts at coordinating Third World positions in the remaining period of the Uruguay Round to ensure that Third World interests are safeguarded and agreements on new themes do not jeopardise their development or result in cross-linkages.

The New Delhi meeting (March 19/20) had been convened by India and had been attended by senior trade officials representing the governments of Brazil, China, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Singapore, Tanzania, Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe.

This is the first time that a broad group of countries of the South had met among themselves to consult and coordinate on the Uruguay Round. Both before the launching of the round and since then, there have been some regional and sub-regional meetings in the South as well as periodic informal meetings of several countries of the South with their counterparts in the North, but none of the South alone.

In line with the practices of such meetings, the Delhi meeting ended with a Chairman's summing up.

Following is the text of the summing up:

"Participants felt that the meeting had provided a useful and timely opportunity to review developments in the Uruguay Round from the point of view of developing countries. They stressed the need to build on the assessment of the state of play in the Uruguay Round contained in the submission issued by the informal group of developing countries in GATT at Geneva (MTN.TNC/W/16 dated 1 March, 1990)".

"They emphasised the need for having coordinated action by developing countries in order to rectify the imbalance and asymmetry what had emerged in the negotiating process. They reaffirmed their willingness to participate constructively in the negotiations in order to ensure the fulfilment of the central objective of preservation and strengthening of the multilateral trading system, securing greater liberalisation of trade in areas of their interest and incorporating the development dimension as an integral part of the emerging rules and frameworks".

(The following are some of the important points to which the delegates drew particular attention".