Nov 9, 1984

SAFEGUARDS ISSUE STILL DEADLOCKED.

GENEVA, NOVEMBER 7 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) -- Efforts through consultations to promote a comprehensive understanding in GATT on the long-pending safeguards issue are still deadlocked, the GATT Council was advised Wednesday.-

The Council was considering individual items on the work programme.-

On the actual items of the work programme on the agenda, the Council was making "slow progress", according to a GATT spokesman.-

On the issue of safeguards, or emergency protective actions to restrict imports under article XIX of the General Agreement, where the Contracting Parties have been mandated to reach a "comprehensive understanding", the chairman of the Council, Amb. Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia, reported that while he had been holding consultations, differences still remained on major issues.-

While various delegations had been exchanging views in an informal way, and these had been intensified recently, "there have been no major breakthroughs as of now", Jaramillo reported.-

The GATT Ministers had called for an understanding to be based on the principles of the General Agreement, and including among its elements:

Transparency; coverage; objective criteria for action including the concept of "serious injury or threat thereof"; temporary nature; degressivity and structural adjustment; compensation and retaliation; and, notification, consultation, multilateral surveillance and dispute settlement with particular reference to the role and functions of the Safeguards Committee.-

A paper before the Council, put forward by the GATT Director-General on his own authority, has outlined the way a safeguards agreement should operate.-

According to a GATT spokesman, it has taken "a fundamental view" on this, suggesting in particular that any agreement should be founded on the basis of non-discrimination, and thus against the concept of "selective safeguards".-

The European Community in particular has been advocating such an approach, ever since the issue came up for negotiations in the Tokyo Round negotiations.-

The EEC has sought GATT sanction to enable it to restrict imports of products from particular countries, rather than all imports from all sources as required by the General Agreement.-

The Third World countries have consistently rejected the "selective-safeguards" approach, which they say would be used primarily against them.-

Jaramillo appealed for continued efforts between now and the annual meeting of the Contracting Parties (November 26-29), to make progress and improve the level of agreement in this area.-

On dispute settlement procedures, the Council had before it a secretariat paper for improvements in a limited area, namely the problem of selection of panellists.-At present, GATT maintains a panel mainly drawn from Geneva missions accredited to GATT.-In view of the difficulties in securing agreement of disputants to the actual panellists, the secretariat had suggested the drawing up of a list of "professional panellists", to be used for setting up of a panel in case of disagreements as now.-

While the idea was received favourably by some, other participants had "difficulties", and further consultations are to be held.-

One GATT source said that some of the objections were out of fears that "professional panellists", drawn from retired national and international officials, would have no real stakes in the trading system as such, and would merely increase the costs of GATT.-Also, the basic difficulties and concerns in dispute settlement were different, and arose from the difficulties of making major trading powers conform to the panel rulings.-

In an apparent effort to address this, Canada has put forward a suggestion that the GATT Director-General should submit to the Council six-monthly reports on the extent to which Contracting Parties had actually conformed to the GATT panel and Council recommendations on the disputes.-

Such reports, Canada has said, would help the Council to monitor the implementation of its recommendations for the settlement of the disputes.-