9:13 AM Feb 9, 1995

NEW HEAD COUNT TO BE DONE ON WTO DG CHOICE

Geneva 8 Feb (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The Chairman of the General Council of the World Trade Organization, Amb. Kesavapani of Singapore, is to start Monday a new round of consultations of WTO members on their preferences among the three candidates in the running for the post of Director-General of WTO.

The three, nominated by contracting parties, are: Kim Chul-SU of South Korea, Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico and Renato Ruggiero of Italy.

The earlier rounds of consultations in 1994, of the 129 cps of the GATT, were conducted by then chair of the CPs, Andras Szepesi of Hungary who reported a stalemate.

EC sources then had said that its candidate, Ruggiero, had majority support of the 128 CPs.

But since the choice in any event had to be by consensus, others dismissed these as irrelevant. Szepesi at end of his consultations had declined to name anyone as the leading candidate (as the EU had wanted) so that others could be pressured to withdraw.

The consensus choice has to be made now by the 76 members of the WTO.

An informal meeting of a small group of key delegations Wednesday, the view emerged that Kesavapani should hold a new round of consultations or private straw-poll of the membership.

Several key Third World delegations say that a solution to the deadlock lay with Brussels and Washington and a choice has to be among the three now in the running and/or any other candidate nominated by a GATT contracting party or parties.

The efforts of "outsiders" to promote themselves, directly or indirectly, has imparted a sense of urgency to the WTO process, with many cps derisive of these candidates promoting themselves.

This seemed to mean that neither Indian-born US national Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati who was being promoted by some other academics on his behalf (in a letter to the Financial Times) nor what WTO diplomats saw as a self-promoting Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum which holds the annual Davos Symposium have figured in any way in the consideration.

Schwab who was reported by the Geneva Post Tuesday, as having been approached by some WTO members (with the forum secretariat faxing that report to various media), but which the Financial Times Wednesday called 'Davos delirium' and his 'anonymous backers in the Geneva diplomatic corps harder to flush out' -- after meeting among others Kesavapani and the EU ambassador to the WTO "withdrew" himself (presumably from the media consideration!).