5:30 AM Feb 16, 1996

MARITIME TALKS WAITING ON US ?

Geneva 16 Feb (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Negotiators from several leading maritime countries struck an optimistic tone over various bilateral discussions and offers they have had this week on maritime services, but expressed concern that a major trading partner (the United States) had so far been unable to table an offer, thus in effect holding up the negotiations.

The United States told the negotiating group that it has held some 18 bilateral meetings this week and had found them useful and that these would part of Washington's continuing analysis and assessment of the offers on the table before making a final decision on its position. The US negotiators took note also of the concerns of other trading partners and promised to convey it to Washington.

The hour-long meeting of the Negotiating Group Friday had been preceded by a week of bilateral talks. The Negotiating Group will meet again in the week of 25 March, with the first days of the week devoted to bilateral talks and ending with a meeting of the group. The negotiations are to be completed by June.

Many of the other delegations privately say that no agreement would be feasible without the US and that either the talks could be extended, in the hope that an agreement might be possible after the November elections in the United States or would have to be given up for the present.

At the meeting for a collective assessment, the European Union had said they had come up at this week talks with some important and improved offers or revisions and that the EU was fully engaged in the process. This was in sharp contrast to those with a weight in this sector. The EU also said that those who signed on at Marrakesh (where the decision for continued maritime talks was agreed to) would be bearing a heavy responsibility (for any failure).

Earlier, Korea and Switzerland had said they were submitting revised offers. Chile announced that it too was distributing an offer. Argentina reported that it was considering tabling an offer shortly.

Nigeria said that it has had useful exchange of views in one bilateral and was seeking adequate response to its concerns before considering a revised offer.

Japan expressed cautious optimism as a result of the more than a dozen bilaterals it had held, resulting in some improved offers. But Japan was disappointed that one major partner was not able to be fully engaged in this request-and-offer process.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway were among others who also spoke of their intensive bilateral talks, and all of them reportedly expressed their concerns over the US position.

Australia referred to a paper it had put forward relating to the multimodal transport and including it within the scope of the maritime services, but said that it was not pushing for any particular approach to be adopted in this matter, but had presented it in terms of alternative scheduling options open to participants.