5:47 AM Feb 7, 1995

MEDIA NOMINATIONS FOR WTO HEAD

Geneva 7 Feb (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The Chairman of the General Council of the World Trade Organization, Amb. Kesavapani of Singapore, is starting informal consultations Wednesday on choosing a successor to Peter Sutherland as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, WTO sources said Tuesday.

Kesavapani is expected to meet first with a small informal key group of countries, and in the light of the discussions with a larger group.

Trade officials said that with more 'unofficial' candidates trying to pitch in and use the impasse to propel themselves into a high-visibility office, key delegations are now keen to put an end to what one senior diplomat called "bizarre" efforts of candidates promoting themselves through the press.

A few days ago, a group of academics, mainly US-based put forward the candidacy of Trade Policy academic, Jagdish Bhagwati, a naturalized US citizen of Indian origin teaching in the United States.

On Tuesday, the Geneva Post (a recently started local English language daily), announced the candidature of Klaus Schwab, Founder-President of the World Economic Forum, with a membership drawn from major European Business groups, and which holds an annual symposium at Davos and manages to bring to it many heads of government from the South and the former East, and some ministers from Europe. The WEF is a highly profitable public relations exercise.

Schwab is also reported to have sought an appointment with Kesavapani.

Though the Geneva Post said Schwab's candidacy was at the instance of many WTO delegates, many of the key countries that would have been involved seemed surprise, with one or two of them describing the media promotion of candidates (a reference both to Schwab's and Bhagwati's) as "bizarre".

Trade diplomats said that Kesavapani is anxious to bring the consultation process to a quick end and select a successor by consensus before the entire process becomes more complicated.

The key to the consensus selection, they say, lies with the US and EU.

Many US officials are reported by other delegations to be coming around to the view that Salinas, who is now pictured as having the least support, will not be able to gain any support from Europe, Africa or Asia. However, Salinas still is being backed by the USTR Micky Kantor and unless Salinas decides to quit himself, the US faces the problem of how to ease him out and what it might imply for the Mexican crisis which is blamed on him by his successors and opposition.