GATT MEMBERS BEING POLLED ON CONTRACTING PARTIES’ SESSION.

Jul 31, 1985

GATT MEMBERS BEING POLLED ON CONTRACTING PARTIES’ SESSION.

GENEVA, JULY 26 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) – The secretariat of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade sent out Friday to the Contracting Parties the U.S. request for a session of the Contracting Parties to be convened in September to discuss the question of launching a new round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations.-

The U.S. request was sent Thursday to the chairman of the Contracting Parties, Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia, and was being communicated to GATT members Friday by telex.-

If 46 GATT members vote "yes" to the U.S. request, the session will be convened after 21 days notice.-

The GATT Contracting Parties have time till August 31 to signify their views on the U.S. request.-

The U.S. had announced last week its intention to seek a session of the CPs, following the failure of the GATT Council to arrive at any consensus decision on these issues.

The U.S. and other western countries are pressing for the launch of a new round of negotiations in GATT, and include trade in services and other new issues.-

The EEC had formally proposed the holding of a meeting at the level of senior officials to discuss and agree on the issues and modalities for a new round, including trade in services.-

Brazil, India and some 22 other Third World countries oppose GATT involvement in services.-

Brazil, supported by India and several others, had proposed two separate meetings of senior officials, one on "goods" and the other on "services".-

The meeting on trade in goods, which is within GATT competence, would be without any conditions and within the framework of GATT.-

The second on services was to have been within the four corners of the 1982 and 1984 GATT decisions on services – namely, for national studies and exchange of information on such studies among the CPs, for such meetings to be organised by the chairman of the Contracting Parties, and for GATT CPs to consider in 1985 at their annual session, the appropriateness and desirability of a multilateral framework on services.-

Brazil’s proposal had said that the senior officials meeting on services would be for "exchange of information" as agreed in 1984, and that its results would be communicated to the Contracting Parties.-

It also stipulated, if any multilateral action on services was considered appropriate and desirable by the Contracting Parties, it would take place outside the GATT framework and subject to a prior understanding on some conditions.-

These included: no parallelism between action on services and goods issues, no trade-offs or cross-linkage between two processes, non-applicability of GATT rules and principles to services, and secretariat support and preparations for multilateral action on services to be provided by international bodies to be agreed upon.-

Each side blocked the adoption of the other’s proposals by consensus.-

A Swedish "compromise" which sought a single senior officials meeting to discuss the subject matter and modalities of a new round also failed to get a consensus, and the Council session was thereupon "suspended".-

Meanwhile, the chairman of the GATT Council, Amb. Kazuo Chiba of Japan told newsmen Thursday that he was still trying to get an agreed consensus decision of the GATT Council, and would renew his efforts in the latter half of August, by when some of the Third World participants at the new Delhi meeting on global system of trade preferences would have returned to Geneva.-